


Star Wars: Dark Mirror

by D_The_Wanderer_IS_OVER_9000



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Eventual Romance, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Foster Care, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Legends/Canon crossover, Male Homosexuality, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Revenge, Teen Angst, Thriller, cloning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_The_Wanderer_IS_OVER_9000/pseuds/D_The_Wanderer_IS_OVER_9000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>7.5 ABY: Luke Skywalker is a Jedi Master, a historian, a hyperspace scout, THE ace pilot, a researcher, and The Dude Who Blew Up The Death Star And Saved The Whole Fraggin' Galaxy And Thus Should NOT Messed With.<br/>At least, in the public opinion.<br/>The way he sees it, he's a farmboy turned PTSD-stricken veteran with suicidal tendencies, a shitty love life, and a foster son that won't admit he's gay. His sister is a somewhat devious politician, and his best friend is a hapless scoundrel married to his sister.<br/>And on top of that, he can't manage to get drunk.<br/>But when a certain vengeful redhead crosses his path in a bar, and they come across a plot that will probably destroy the New Republic, and force them to confront the darkest corners of their soul, will he find it in himself to finally fight back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Someone I met in a bar

| Hurt/Comfort/Mystery - Reviews: 5 - Published: 12-16-15 - Updated: 08-02-16 | id:11671703  
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**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Countless stories have been told about the heroes of the Star Wars Universe, both the Canon and the Legends one. As a great Legends fan, I felt the need of keeping the torch of the EU fire burning, despite it being basically written off as a "separate but equally valid continuity" (Much like the Doctor Who Virgin New & Missing Adventures, which were however written by former DW scriptwriters and directors). I am also sad because of how quickly the character of Ken (goody-two-shoes grandson of Palpatine which befriended Luke in a forgotten book series) was forgotten by the EU people themselves, despite having so much potential.**

**Just to clarify, this isn't a story about the lesser known characters of Star Wars being turned into heroes. It's about the heroes of Star Wars themselves being brought down from their pedestals-and portrayed as normal people, with extraordinary qualities, of course, but still with the anguishes, doubts, regrets and fears of normal people. Prepare to see a PTSD-afflicted Luke Skywalker, a Vietnam-veteran-like Rogue Squadron, a more politician-like and pragmatical Leia Organa, an edgier, more rugged Han Solo, a harsher but more fragile Mara Jade, and a more vengeful and bloodthirsty Lumiya.**

**My rather ambitious task having been presented, enjoy its prologue.**

**-Line Break-**

**Prologue: Someone I met in a bar**

_7 ABY (7 years After the Battle of Yavin)_

Luke didn't like this bar. It was under too many aspects too similar to the Mos Eisley Cantina, and just like it, no one was really prone to try and recognize him, or ask questions for that matter, and that suited him just fine. His last interview with Janis Thorn had ended up with him putting the journalist in the hospital, and Thorn and all his friends, like the vultures they were, had immediately pounced on the event. Luke still sincerely wondered how Thorn could have survived during the almost-quarter-century-long Imperial domination over Coruscant. Force, executing Thorn would probably have made half the people of the Galaxy forgive a good deal of Palpatine's sins.

Luke gulped his third mug of Angry Rancor, but the memory of the interview with Thorn didn't go away as Luke had hoped. Curse the Force for keeping to cleanse the alcohol out of his system. He knew that Thorn had wanted him to attack him that night. And putting the man in the hospital had only managed to further hammer Thorn's point home:the Jedi were dangerous and could not be trusted. Even more the same Jedi who had fired the lucky shot that destroyed the Death Star I, and the  _Tarkin_ , and had seemingly managed to kill both Vader and the Emperor, and had ended the lives of Shadowspawn and fifty thousand peope in a single shot.

And this were only the most famous of the very massacres he'd perpetrated.

But what had really made Luke's blood boil was Thorn's question of  _how could a twenty-six year-old murderer with serious mental problems have possibly been thought fit to be the foster father of a teenage orphan._

Luke had felt the call of the Dark Side all too strong in that moment: how could they even  _dare_  to think that he'd ever harm Ken.

_Ken..._

-Don't you think you've had enough of those, flyboy?- a playful voice asked him, and Luke did a double take. The woman had bright emerald green eyes and flaming red hair that cascaded down to her shoulder. The line of her face was smooth and alluring, but her Force resence was way too shielded. For a second, Luke was reminded of his old former love interest and now sworn enemy, Shira Brie AKA Lumiya. But this woman didn't feel like Lumiya:no, her Force presence was whole, unlike the one of a cyborg like Vader or Lumiya.

-Still ain't broken my record.- he said curtly, draining the mug to the bottom.

-Bad day?- she asked conversationally, and Luke shrugged. -As always.-

-Can't have been as bad as mine.-She smirked ruefully, and Luke eyed her:-Why? Killed someone?-

-Wrong guy.- she shrugged, and Luke replied. -Right one for me. Didn't go that far, however.-

-Oh?- she seemed genuinely curious. -Why not?-

-Couldn't risk loosing custody of my son.- Luke risked, and noticed that the woman was awfully close to him.

-I'm sorry for the kid, then.- the woman's eyes flashed with a hint of-confusion? Pity? Guilt? Elation? Luke couldn't tell-before the hard, unmistakeable shape of a barrel pressed into Luke's chest. -'Cause I'm about to make him a orphan.-

-Not here.- Luke said simply, seemingly unconcerned about the hand-held blaster pressed between his ribs. -Too many people. Too many witnesses.-

The woman blinked confusedly for a moment about his unexpected lack of resistance, but then nodded affirmatively. -Very well.-

-Luke paid for the drinks, and they headed out. Truth was, a part of him-the bigger and ever-growing part-just wanted to get this done with, because he knew he deserved death a million times over. The smaller, undying part, instead-kept stopping him from putting a blaster in his mouth. It kept talking about his responsibility to Ken, and Luke knew it was right. He had promised to a dying Triclops he'd take care of his son, and he couldn't break that promise.

He turned to face his executioner. She was exceptionally strong in the Force-but didn't feel like a Darksider. Luke could feel she was more like him-she walked on the line between the two paths, unwilling to lose herself in the Darkness-unwilling to be blinded by the Light.

She was a mystery-one that made him ache to solve it.

-Who?- he asked, and confusion was written all across her face. So Luke repeated the question. -Who have I killed? Your father? Your brother? Your husband?-

-You know fully well who you murdered, Skywalker.- she snarled, tightening the hold on her blaster. -You murdered my master.-

-Palpatine?- Luke realized. Flashbacks of cackling golden eyes hit him, the ghost pain of the Force Lightning the madman had been able to electrocute him with coming back full force. -That wasn't me.- he whispered, as the hulking, crippled black figure wrenched the lightning away from him through the power of sheer desperation, dying in front of his son for the thousandth time. -That was Vader.-

He could feel his executioner's disbelief. She didn't believe what Luke had just said, yet she could feel that he was telling the truth-she herself had a hard time trying to see her master's killer in this PTSD-crippled wreck.

-I don't believe you.- she repeated, trying to hide the shaking in her voice. She couldn't believ e she was shaking-but the sheer despair coming from Luke Skywalkrer was too strong to be cowardice, or an attempt to save his own skin-no, he was telling the truth-and the sheer despair of Skywalker's flashback, the utter pain of his torture-they were so strong in the Force that they hit her with the force of a Death Star.

-M. J. Mara Jade.- Luke read the engraving on her gun. -You've made yourself wquite the reputation as a bounty hunter, in the years following Palpatine's death.- his voice was not mocking, unlike that of any other person Mara had spoken to. He wasn't judging, either, as if he knew he had no right to judge. -Let me guess, you were one of the Emperor's Hands once.-

-I was  _the_  Emperor's Hand, Skywalker. There weren't any others.- she snarled, outraged, and Luke shook his head matter-of-factly. -Wrong. There was at least another one. Her name was Shira Brie. Does it ring a bell to you?-

Mara was shocked. Shira Brie. The same woman who had come to her months ago, confirming her suspicions that it had been a Skywalker to kill her master-the same one who had told her where to find Luke Skywalker. Yet she pushed it away. Skywalker was lying. He had to be. Her master would NEVER hide this from her. He had personally told her, on many occasions, that she was unreplaceable. But if Skywalker was telling the truth-

-No, he HAD to be lying. Her master would never have just used her like this-

-I know how it feels, to realize that your whole world is a lie, that your very beliefs are lies...- Luke spoke softly, the shadows in his eyes getting closer and closer to devouring him. -I know what it feels like to realize that you've always been a means to an end.-

-You know nothing, Skywalker.- Mara seethed through gritted teeth, but Luke's reply was pure steel. -Try me.-

No longer had he spoken those words that a wave of pure anger from Mara kicked Luke off his feet, sending him crashing on the dirty alley floor. Immediately a blaster bolt soared through the air, going for his head: but his PTSD kicked in faster, and immediately he was back on the battlefields of Mindor, or in the alleys of Corellia, or trying to make his way out of the Lost City of the Jedi on Yavin, with that same instinct to kill, kill, kill, KILL!

His lightsaber flew into his hands and automatically parried all the blaster bolts-till Mara simply discarded her gun and she drew her own lightsaber, the purple blade furiosly crashing onto Luke's green one, while the Jedi tried to counter her Vaapad moves with his own style of Soresu. -Stop, please!- he cried, blocking yet another thrust. -I do not want to fight you!-

-And I don't want to fail my master's last command.- Mara rebuked syteely, forcing Luke back. -What's the matter, Skywalker? Am I too much of a pushover for the great Jedi warrior who murdered Vader AND the Emperor in cold blood?-

-I told you-I didn't kill either of them!- Luke shouted, forced to rely on Djem So by the increasing viciousness of Mara's blows. -Why don't you want to accept that maybe Vader was sick of being Palpatine's slave?-

-Because Vader would never save a Jedi!- Mara answered, trying a slash to the side. -Vader was the greatest exterminator of Jedi! He took down those who conspired to take by himself and saved Palpatine!-

-Oh, sure, that's what your  _Master_  told you!- Luke pushed her back with pure, brute strenght. -That's what he told _me_ , too. But as I refused to take his side, and he tortured me with Force Lightning, he did not hesitate to attack me with me the truth, showing me memories of how he manipulated Vader, of how he made him think that the only chance to save his family was to become a Sith. And coincidentally, he manipulated him to kill them, to make sure that the visions that had drawn Vader to him would come to pass, enslaving him forever!-

- **SHUT UP!-** the woman roared, and the Force around her downright  _exploded_ , the shockwave knocking Luke off his feet and against the trash bins. The woman went for a two-handed downward strike, but Luke managed to recover at the last minute and blocked it, his muscles straining for the effort. He manouvered her blade in a rotating motion-just enough to force her back, then kicked her lightsaber out of her hands-but her blaster's barrel was pressed against his forehead before he could bring the blade back up, tired as he was.

-Who do you think is gonna be faster now,  _Skywalker_?- Mara Jade once again seethed his name like it was a curse, cocking the gun. -Me pressing the trigger, or you cutting my hand off?-

-As I've learned long ago, there's _always_  gonna be someone  _faster_ , sooner or later.- Luke chuckled with self-irony, before turning serious again. -Please, Mara. Stop walking down the path of revenge. Believe me, I walked down it too-and things turned out not to be as I believed them to be, at all.-

Then, as she remained silent, he added, with his usual, self-deprecating irony:-None of us really know how many shots you've got left, so I suppose I should ask myself a question:"Do ya feel lucky, punk?"-

-Well, do ya?-

-I dunno.- Luke smiled at her. -Why don't we discover it together?-

Mara Jade had enough. She couldn't bear the Jedi's infuriating irony anymore.

So she pressed the trigger, and Luke closed his eyes, awaiting the peaceful embrace of Death just like Ben Kenobi did seven years prior on the first Death Star.

_Click._

**-Line Break-**

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**And so CLIFFHANGER!**

**Guess I've left y'all hangin', didn't I? Now, folks and fellow Star Wars fans, please don't lynch me. The story you have just read, in all honesty, was initially meant to be a one-shot, but instead decided to turn it into a multi-chapter story, and that's the reason for the cliffhanger. I'm still writing the next chapter, so you'll have to wait at least until next week for it to come out.**

**In the meantime, don't forget the three 'Rs': Read, Review & Recommend!**


	2. Like Father, Like Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke Skywalker has found himself once again miracolously alive. But what of Mara Jade? Has she been just a dream? He'd like to know - - but there are farm more important matters at hand, it seems.  
> Namely, his son.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello, fellow fanfictioners! How life's been treating ya? Habe you seen The Force Awakens(I did, but we can talk about it in another occasion)?**

**GOD, I feel** **_ecstatic_ ** **after watching it. It was something I'd been waiting for for a long time, sure, but actually watching it...it was something else, but the point is, it** **_inspired_ ** **me. It gave me so many things, so many ideas, I couldn't resist and decided to finally take this project up seriously, and...here I am, finally writing this story down for good. But enough with the chit chat...**

**...On with the story, then!**

**-Line Break-**

**Chapter One: Fathers and Sons**

_**7.5 ABY, The Lehmra-Kracht High School for All Races, the Principal's office.** _

"So what's he done this time, hm?" Luke arched an eyebrow at the principal, a portly, middle-aged human, sinking in his chair while Ken, with a broken nose, sat in the chair next to him, his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast. The principal visibly shrank back in his chair, as if he'd thought Luke's gesture was one of intimidation (and by the looks of it, he probably had), and stuttered nervously for a second, before finally answering, with a frantic nod:"He attacked three students. With the  _Force_!"

Luke mentally took note of how he said the word as if it was a scandal, and then turned to Ken with a weary sigh. He felt as he was ten years back at the Ancorhead Police Station, with him being Uncle Owen and Ken being him. "Have you got anything else to say to your defense, Ken?"

"Only that he forgot to mention that of those same three guys he said I 'attacked', two where holding me still while the third was beating me up." the fourteen-year-old grumbled, looking away, and Luke turned back at the principal. "That hardly classifies as 'attacking', in my experience. Rather, it was self-defense."

"He should have reported to a teacher and asked for help-"

"-And how, pray tell, if he was being held down by two other boys and being beaten up by a third-"

"-He shouldn't have resorted to violence-"

"-Well, I don't think those guys would have done the same-"

"But-But he used the Force!" the principal blurted out, pointing bot his hands accusingly at the teenager. "He had an unfair advantage against the victims-think of what he could have done instead instead of just knocking the three boys back and unconscious!"

Ken said nothing. Sure, he was astonished-and mad-that the principal would try to put all the blame on him, but still said nothing, as he could all too well see that Luke's face had darkened visibly. The principal saw it, too, and gulped in mild fear, shrinking back in his chair. -So could have done I,- Luke spoke slowly, a dangerous tone in his voice. -But you don't exactly see me going around Force-choking everybody that crosses me, do you?-

The principal only gulped, too frightened to say anything. Luke rose up. "For all I care, this conversation is over. Ken had every right to defend himself. Nonetheless, he'll be grounded for a couple weeks-"

"Hey!"

"Wanna make that  _three_  weeks, Ken?"

"Two weeks is astral." Ken grumbled in defeat, getting out of the chair he too, and Luke turned back at the principal, with a last, icy remark: "You'd have done great as a judge during the days of the Great Jedi Purge, dear sir."

**-Line Break-**

The ride back home had been unsurprisingly uneventful-until Luke asked the million-credit question.

"Wanna tell me how all that mess really happened, kiddo?" he asked Ken, his tone and stare devoid of any judgement or anger-just curious. Ken looked away, and Luke resumed staring at the road, sighing:"If you don't want to, it's fine. But keeping it inside for too long won't be good for your health."

"Fine then." Ken sighed, and his gaze fell inqto his lap. "There was a guy at school-deceivingly scrawny fella with big goons. Name was Jasho Talin, he's my age, and hates my guts 'cause I'm your foster son and that caused his dumb girlfriend to break up with him and fawn all over me-'the son of a mass murderer'- as he so elegantly put it-even though I swing the  _other_  way. He decided he'd had enough and got his two goons to help him out. I took a bad beating-but when he broke my nose I just couldn't see anymore and-and I lashed out at him and the other two with the Force out of pure anger. I-I just couldn't control it."

"Believe it or not, I had the same problem when I was a kid-only that in nineteen years of life I never realized I could use the Force-hey, stop laughing."

"Sorry, it's just that I didn't expect you to be so-"

"I know." Luke replied, with a grim smile. -"And that's what everyone says when they get to know the guy behind all the Republic propaganda, ain't it? It's still a wonder how you could have stuck with me for so long."

"Why?" Ken asked, frowning, and Luke ran a hand through his bowl-cut. "Because, well, let's face it-it's hard to discover your hero is a mass murderer, isn't it?" he said ruefully, and Ken couldn't understand if he was talking about himself-or Anakin Skywalker AKA Darth Vader-and the worst thing was that in Luke's mind, it made almost no difference at all. "I've killed millions of people and through their deaths I hurt millions more. Even that kid, Jasho Talin-he was the son of one of the many Death Star technician. A-and his mother, Bukee Talin-she tried to assassinate Leia, two months ago, during a public speech. She wanted revenge for how his husband had been murdered by the Rebellion-but she was going to shoot at Leia, and-I just acted on impulse, to protect my sister-and gunned her down without even thinki-and in doing so, I orphaned that kid  _again-_ and in retaliation, he hurt  _you."_

A lonely tear ran down Luke's cheek, and he hastily brushed it away with the back of his hand-his mechanical hand. It was a most pitiful sight-but one side of the coin kept telling him he'd always done the right thing, that he shouldn't be suffering because he'd done the right thing...while the other kept telling him it was RIGHT that he'd suffer for having done what was to be done, that he DESERVED the pain...Luke knew which side was the people and which side was the government, which side was the Empire and which one was the New Republic, which side was Light and which one was Darkness, which side was Evil and which one was Good...and that was the worst thing of all.

_Knowing._

He was shaken out of his self-loathing by Ken's hand squeezing his elbow, and looked into the teenager's grey-blue eyes only to be faced by his duty. The boy's eyes-and heck, even his Force presence, were pleading with him to stop this self-destruction, and he found himself giving in to them.

He remembered the promise he'd made to the boy's father, Triclops. That he'd take care of Ken, be the father that Triclops could never be...because the mutant knew Luke understood. He was a failed clone son of Palpatine and Luke was the son of Vader...and thus Luke was the only one that could help Ken bear the burden of his grandfather's legacy...but Luke couldn't do it if he kept letting himself be crushed under the weight of the responsibilities he had taken for his actions. He had to learn to live with them...and Ken was the only thing that managed to help him in doing so, even if the teenager wasn't fully aware of this fact.

"You know," he mustered, looking at the boy's broken nose, "Once we get back home, I'm going to teach you Force Healing."

"For real?" Ken beamed, and Luke nodded. "Astral, Luke!"

Luke found himself smiling: there never seemed to be any end to the enthusiasm that Ken could seemingly manage to pull out of nowhere, even in the blackest of days...and he always managed to shine some of that light on Luke's poor excuse for a social life, just like how Han could rope him into the most ridiculously foolish misadventures or how Wedge could manage to get him to attend a Rogue Squadron reunion.

But their abilities were understandable: Han almost was his immature older brother and by now he'd lost count of how many times they'd saved each other's life, and Wedge was probably his best friend...not to mention that all the Reds shared the same connection...they'd all killed hundreds of people in the rush of the battle, only to realize the weight of their actions when the adrenaline had eventually worn off. And there was something else, of course: the loss of their wingmates, a weight that would forever be on their conscience, especially Bigg's sacrifice.

They were all men who had gone to fight for something they believed in: and now they'd come back as emotional wrecks, unable to create themselves a life outside of the battlefield-and that's why they kept fighting. It was a fact that bound them together: one of the reasons Red Squadron had been nicknamed  _Rogue_ Squadron...and despite having left them two years ago, Luke still felt proud to have been one of them.

"Yes, for real." he told Ken, himself unable to resist smiling, for the first time in the Force only knew how long.

**-Line Break-**

The two managed to get home without any trouble, to a modest residence little known to the press-Luke could very much afford an apartment at Republica 500, the Senate residential district, like his sister, but unlike Leia he'd been raised as a moisture farmer on a backwater desert planet, and thus felt uneasy among the luxury, preferring humbleness and modesty, as the desert had teached him to. It was one of the few things Luke felt he owed to Tattooine: no matter what everyone-anyone-thought, his origins thankfully stayed there, constantly reminding him that he was a simple man, despite the fact that his powers in the Force always lead people to think otherwise.

The residence area was made up of ten rows of ten blocks of a hundred apartments each, with a common courtyard in the middle of the block, with a opening to let the sun shine in (which was automatically substituted by a skylight in case of rain), and it wasn't much different from the other residence areas scattered across Coruscant, and they were home to most of the middle class workers working into the nearby New Republic Center for Research and Development (where Luke had actually managed to get a job).

"Nice place."A voice froze Luke on the spot just as he and Ken about to get in. Luke recognized that voice immediately, the sarcastic undertone beneath the ice immediately giving the speaker's voice away. "Hello, Mara Jade." he smiled gently as he turned to face the woman. "It's been an odd couple of weeks since our first encounter. I must say, you really left me hanging that night."

"Cut it with the joking, Skywalker. I'm here to talk businness." the woman growled, and Ken immediately turned at her. "Who are you?!" he asked, having felt her anger and hatred all too clearly, and having also felt that it was directed at Luke. "An...acquaintance." Mara Jade replied off-handedly, before scowling at the boy: "And who might you be, boy?"

"I'm Ken Skywalker." the boy replied, and Luke interrupted the both of them, before things got out of hand. "So what do you want, Mara?"

"Don't call me 'Mara'. We are not on first-name basis. And I have half a mind to kill you, but I have to get you to tell me something, first. Something unwise to talk about in such an open space." the woman said, and Luke nodded. He couldn't sense any murderous intent hidden in her voice other than that which she made explicit, so he turned to Ken. "Ken, do your thing?-"

"What thing?"

"That thing you do when you don't wanna be found that is a real pain in the ass even for me." Luke's right eye twitched unnervedly, and Ken understood, and closed his eyes in concentration. Immediately a peaceful feeling swept over the three, and all the sounds from around them were drowned. "There. Now we can speak." Luke said-only to get slammed into the wall by Mara Jade. "You karkin' son of a schutta!- she spat at him, looking mad as Hell, and Luke found himself hearing one of Han's old quotes: None of the Nine Corellian Hells hath no fury like a woman scorned. "What did you do to me?!"

"I don't get what you mean-"

"Of course you do-you're the one who silenced my Master's voice in my head!"

_Click._

"Whatever he did, I suggest you let him go before you two discuss it.  _Civilly."_  you could hear the pure ICE dripping from Ken's voice, as he held Mara's blaster to her head. "What the-My blaster! How did you get it-"

"My little silence charm doesn't just mute sounds-it can mute  _anything."_  Ken replied, and Mara said, letting go of Luke. "Who are you really, boy? There's so much power in you-and it feels all too much like  _his_ , only not at all...dark."

"Leave him be. Your quarry is with me." Luke protested. He couldn't let Mara Jade-or anyone else for that matter-discover of Ken's true parentage...but he seemed to have the opposite effect when Mara Jade turned to him with a shocked stare. "So he IS related to Palpatine...he feels...he feels like him, all too much-he must be spawn to that clone he'd told me to forget about-"

"Shut up. You don't know  _nothing_  about me." Ken pressed the gun to her temple, ignoring Luke's gaze. "Tell me, boy, why would you protect your progenitor's murderer?" Mara asked him, instead, and Ken snarled: "Palpatine was a  _monster_ who tortured his own  _son-my father-_ a monster who had enslaved the Galaxy and tormented Luke's father and built two fucking stations to blow up planets-Do I need to go on?"

"Palpatine mantained Order. No doubt you've been indoctrinated buy the Rebellion." Mara scoffed. "And as for the two Planetary Extractors-"

"Death Stars." Luke corrected her. "They were made to be used to extract ore from inhabited worlds-"

"Oh they sure were 'cause they blew up  _my sister's demilitarized and pacifist homeworld with ten kriffin' billions of people on it!-_ Luke snarled, and Mara blinked in shock for an almost-unseen moment, but she quickly recovered:"Terrorists. Rebel supporters."

"What part of 'demilitarized' and 'pacifist' you didn't understand?" Luke replied in disbelief. "Didn't you feel their death cries through the Force? Their pain, their ANGUISH? Did Palpatine really strip all humanity away from you?"

Mara said nothing.

"Well, then I can only say GOOD RIDDANCE if you don't hear your puppeteer's voice in your head anymore. Maybe you have understood how  _deeply_ he lied to you throughtout _your whole life."_ Luke finished his tirade in discomfort. "Leave, Jade. You have no quarry with Ken, as he chose to refuse his heritage  _years_  ago, and no right to accuse me of your former Master's murder-when it was Vader who did it and  _Shira Brie_ set me up  _again_. So leave. I don't want to fight anymore."

"You are a fool then, Skywalker, if you think that that's all there is at stake." Mara sneered. "Countless Imperial Factions are warring on your precious New Republic. The presence of the Emperor's heir could finally reunite them on a single, more easy to fight, enemy."

"And you are a fool if you think it would go that smoothly, Jade. And I'd never endanger Ken like this." Luke stepped closer to her-or was he moving in front of Ken? "Now leave."

"Fine. I suppose that the information I gathered on the woman who supposedly 'set you up' doesn't interest you at all." Mara turned to go away, but Luke caught her by the elbow. "Tell. Me." he said through gritted teeth and with hard eyes.

"Let me go and maybe I'll tell you." she snarled back, and Luke let her go. "Since I understood that she'd used me not to get her own hands dirty, I've been doing some of my own investigating, and founs out she's been meeting with a lot of the old Imperial Security Bureau officiers-Alicia Beck, Kyben Korlan, Erkim Zola-and with members of Palpatine's shadiest killers-for-hire-Keepschill Snow, Jezejen Caan, Bane Thyrron-information that I'm sure that the Coruscant Security Force is waging a war not to give them to your precious New Republic."

"And why would you give them to me?"

"Because I know the name Shira Brie goes by nowadays: Lumiya." Mara told him. "As a self-proclaimed Dark Lady of the Sith she has no interest in order-the war she waged three years ago in the Outer Rim was just anarchy, aimed only to get revenge on you, Skywalker. I'd never follow someone so single-minded, even if I'd kill you myself for all the death you caused."

"Oh, I get where you're going: killing me, you'd only do her a favor."

"Exactly."

"I already told you I didn't kill Palpatine."

" _He_  told me you did."

"But you can't hear him anymore. I can assure you, I never jumped on the Death Star to kill him-the Rebel Fleet would have easily done that."

"Then why did you board it?"

"I-" Luke began, but immediately stopped. He didn't understand why, but those jade eyes-he could feel the  _good_  in them beneath the ice-but it was almost as if the good would never come out unless he told her the truth. But why was he having these thoughts, why? It felt almost as if the Force itself had drawn the two together again just to have some fun. He almost felt Ben shake his head in disappointment all the way from the Netherworld of the Force, disapproving of his poor conception of the Force. But since he'd killed Shadowspawn, Luke's trust in the Force had been dulled; and the Force seemed to do nothing to make it strong again.

_If you find yourself far away from the Force, trust it that it's not the Force the one who has moved._

His old Master's words of guidance came back through his head. Could it be that this whole affair was all the will of the Force?

For the first time in a long time, Luke decided to believe again. "I wanted to reedem Vader. There was still good in him...I felt it in him just as I feel it in you now. But the Emperor taunted me until I tried to draw on the Dark Side, and Vader's last taunt made me lash out in anger at him, defeating him and cutting off his hand...and then I woke the Hell up, realizing that I did to Vader the same thing he'd done me...and the sight of his mechanical hand,  _so much like mine_ , made me realize that the Dark Side was causing me to turn into Vader. So I threw my lightsaber away and told the Emperor he'd never turn me...only for Palpatine to lash out at me with his Force Lightning.

"The agony was unbereable...but after what felt like ages, but in truth was little more than mere minutes...I saw Vader's black, crippled, hulking figure pick up Palpatine with brute force and carrying him to the elevator shaft and throw him down the tower with the force of despair."

And he recounted those facts with a dazed tone, as if he was living through them once again. Ken squeezed his elbow, before the memories could make him suffer another attack of PTSD. Luke silently thanked him, with a nod of gratitude, before turning back to Jade. "You wanted the truth, Jade, and I gave it to you. Now tell me, could you find any traces of lying in my aura while I spoke?"

"No." Jade begrudgingly conceded, but added. "Still, I ca't understand why you'd want to save Vader, and why would he want to save you."

"Because you've probably never had a family, have you?" Ken stated with a tone of sad certainty. -If you had, you'd understand the bond between fathers and sons...you'd understand that I'd do anything for Luke and he'd do anything for me, just like his father gave his life to save Luke's while Luke was ready to give his life to save his father."

And with that being said, he left Mara Jade to mull over those words and their meaning, while he dragged Luke to their apartment and locked the door once they were in. And once they were in, Luke hugged him tight, grateful to the Force that when the Father had not been strong enough to tell the truth, the Son had been.

For a moment, everything felt right...

...and then, Luke's comlink beeped.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Sorry if I'm not doing my rant this time, but here in my country is three in the morning and after having spent all the night typing this chapter in front of my computer...I really have no energy for a rant, right now. See ya all next week: in the meantime, R & R.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no rest for the wicked, nor is there any for the cursed, and after two dangerous meetings with the unstable assassin Mara Jade, and the revelation of his self-styled archenemy being still alive, Luke Skywalker is starting to believe he not only belongs to the latter category, but that he's its downright poster dude and mascot.  
> A hurried call by his sister might reinforce that security - - or might it destroy it once again?

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello fanfictioners, and welcome to a brand new chapter of Star Wars: Dark Mirror!**

**By the way, I've got a question for all of you who've already watched Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. The question is basically this: is Finn sensitive to the Force or not?**

**Because almost every fanfiction writer writes him as Force-sensitive, but Wookieepedia (the official Star Wars wiki for both the Canon and Legends continuities) says nothing about the matter. That being said...**

**...On with the story, then!**

**Chapter Two: Get on to work**

_New Republic Intelligence Headquarters, a hour later..._

"So what is it, Leia? I thought you were going to be part of the peace delegation to Kommenor." Luke asked his sister as he descended from his Haarlenk-Daveedzann speeder bike, helmet tucked under one arm. Leia merely shook her head: "My participation was cancelled by the Provisional Council in light of the Failure of 'Rraq."

Luke winced as he remembered the recent events his sister had gone through.

'Rraq, for those who hadn't even heard about it on the Holonet lately, the only inhabited planet in the system of Ho'Rrint, in the Corporate Sector, and was famous due to its mines of uranium, which they sold to half the Rim. Leia had been sent there to negotiate the system's entrance in the New Republic, with a much profitable-for-both-parts treaty to discuss, and given the importance of the 'Rraq mines, Leia was inclined to make even more concessions to S'Darn H'Ssenn, president of 'Rraq and to the head of the 'Rraq Uranium Exports-and it was almost too good that the two 'Rraqites' interests almost always coincided. It had started out pretty fine-until it turned out that the 'Rraqites were being courted by another suitor, self-proclaimed Lord High Admiral Jorrje Valken-Bosshk JR.

Valken-Bosshk was the Admiral presiding over the neighboring Amurka system, which he renamed the United System of Amurka after he killed the residing Moff and gained control of the system in the chaos that there was in the Empire after Palpatine's death, and really wasn't much more than a petty warlord with a fleet of three Star Destroyers. While the New Republic offered peace and more advantagious businness agreements, the USA was far closer and had over ten times the firepower Leia had (she herself had insisted that they didn't need much firepower at all, seeing as it was supposed to be a peaceful delegation going to a peaceful meeting). Leia had tried her hardest, and that was something to be praised, but had hesitated a bit too much in calling reinforcements in case things got ugly-and the hatred she stil carried towards the Tarkin Doctrine, (which had lead to the destruction of her homeworld of Alderaan and was admired and applied by Valken-Bossk) essentially led her to fail to find a peaceful resolution, and then all Nine Corellian Hells broke loose.

Valken-Bossk razed 'Rraq with his three Star Destroyers, killing S'Darn H'Ssenn, and, in retaliation, the 'Rraqites, with all the uranium they had, nuked the USA, which led to Valken-Bossk crommitting suicide by cashing all three his Star Destroyers on the planet...all resulting in the death of billions and a massive credibility failure for the New Republic.

Luke hugged his sister, the awareness that he could only offer her the bitter consolation that he still had more blood on his hands making his heart ache. "I've missed you, lil' sis."

"Lil' sis? May I remind you that we're twins and that we still don't know who was born first, lil' bro?" it was a poor attempt at banter, a poor attempt to conceal their respective burdens, to conceal thr haunting grief they both carried for the millions of deaths and endless suffering their well-meaning and ideals-backed actions had caused, especially on Leia's part...and both brothers knew it all too well.

"So, what's the buzz? Tell me, what's happening, and why was I called so urgently for 'classified reasons'?"

"Now don't you get sarcastic with me, Luke. You've got no idea how hard a day I had, what with having to arm-wrestle vital information from the CSF(1) and organize a NRI (1) meeting without possibility of infiltration from either the CSF or the Anti-Human League(3)." Leia bit back, and Luke sighed and ran a hand through his hair, apologizing: "Sorry, Leia...it's just that I've had a rough day too..."

"We'll talk about it later, then." Leia sighed herself. "As much as I'd love talking about everything that's haunting me, it will have to wait...what we'll be discussing here will probably determine the future of the New Republic."

"And what I have to tell you will even more." Luke replied, making Leia frown, but he simply gave a 'I'll tell you later' look as thet were approaching the Conference Room.

In the room, sat some of the high echelons of the New Republic-Chancellor Mon Mothma, Public Relations Director Olia Choko, Senator Sosha Soruna, Senator Kyob Bennedd, Senator Jask Moran-, top members of the NRI-Phil Reddick, Donnye Rassk, Cameron Davenport, and the Head of the NRI himself, Jengar Hooker-not to mention some of the top guns of the Military and Navy too, like Crix Madine, Carlist Rieekan, Gial Ackbar and, of course, Lando and Han.

"Ah, Senator. I was wondering when you'd show up." Hooker raised a displeased eyebrow, then cast a wary gaze at Luke, before questioning, with an even more displeased tone: "And what does this civilian have to do with our meeting?"

"This 'civilian' has valuable information, Mr. Hooker." Luke remarked, and Hooker replied with irritation. "Then it would be best to hand it over, Mr. Skywalker. After all, it is the Head of the New Republic Intelligence who asks you."

"Then you should start first. After all, you're the Head of the New Republic Intelligence." Luke snarked back and a 'Ooh, burn' came from Han's side of the table, much to the annoyance of the other echelons. Hooker, on his part, looked almost livid, but begrudgingly accepted, showing the group the hologram of a cyborg woman with malicious yellow eyes, wrapped in a purple cloak and turbant. "Very, well, Skywalker-I hope then that you are familiar with this woman."

"You bet I am." Luke replied bitterly, before stating: "ISB(4) Special Agent Shira Brie AKA Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith and, as of now, Master of the Rule of Two. She framed me up for murder already once or twice. Waged a war in the Outer Rim for the only purpose to get back at me, since me torpedo-ing her starfighter turned her into an insane, vengeful murder. I wonder why. She's currently been meeting in secret with other top members of the ISB and other Darksiders."

"Correct-hey, how do you know of her current activities?" Hooker questioned in suspicion. "All we have about her presence in Coruscant is rumors-and even those, it was a pain in the ass to wrench them out of the CSF's grasp."

"The CSF only lets you gather the intel they want you to gather, Mr. Hooker. I was told this information at gunpoint by a bounty hunter who wanted me to die with the knowledge that 'our precious New Republic was gonna finally fall.'"

"And this...bounty hunter...did you then dispose of them?" Hooker inquired, but Luke merely answered: "It's kinda hard to fight when you're having a PTSD attack."

"Which was pretty convenient for your opponent, wasn't it, Skywalker? That your personal problems got in the way of you doing your duty?" Hooker sneered, and Luke raised a puzzled eyebrow. "What duty? Last time I checked, I wasn't one of your spies, Hooker, but a researcher."

"Well then you should start researching _information_  and play the useful little Jedi instead of withdrawing information from those who are in duty of gathering it." Hooker snarled, and a derisive snort was heard from none other than Lando Calrissian himself. "Calm down, Hooker, and leave the kid be. You aren't in the Empire anymore."

"Yeah, I'm starting to see why even Cracken (5) disliked you. You don't know when to let go of n innocent guy till you've bled all the intel out of him, just like a true Imp. Or was it maybe because of your surname?" Han put his two credits in, pouring Tibanna gas all over the fire. "Han!" gasped Leia while Hooker spluttered in pure outrage; but, Han being Han, most of the guys in the room just shrugged.

"General Solo is right, Chief Hooker. You may be Cracken's successor, but it doesn't justify doing a poor job of upholding his legacy. Especially when the man whose word you're questioning has been one of the Alliance's (and the New Republic's, too) best front-line fighters for six years." Admiral Ackbar silenced Hooker, and resumed speaking in his place. "Lumiya has been rumored to have held secret meetings with several Imperial figureheads, whose identities are still unknown to us. The holo of her we have showed you earlier doesn't exactly confirm her identity, but I doubt there are many cyborg women on Coruscant with Sith-like yellow eyes."

"Indeed. And her appearance comes at the gravest of times." Olia Choko muttered, making the guys-with the exception of Hooker and Bennedd - frown in confusion. "You must know that the Chancellor has been working on a revolutionary reform that, here on Coruscant, could clash with certain, ah, interests..."

"Indeed. It is my intention of moving the galactic capital away from Coruscant, and to introduce a voting system to elect a new planet to be the New Republic capital every four years..." Mon Mothma explained, somber as ever. "You must understand that it would cancel over twenty-five millennia of Coruscantian supremacy...a move that would destroy a great deal of the powers the Coruscant aristocracy held over both the Old Republic and the Empire. Many of these aristocrats had too many connections in the Empire...they would be more than likely to support a coup led by Lumiya to make this reform fail."

"Pardon me, Supreme Chancellor, but I have to disagree." General Madine spoke up. "There are very few people outside what's left of the Empire that would gladly support Lumiya. No, only fellow ISB masterminds would readily support her and at the same time be able to dismantle our Republic from within-thanks, Skywalker-especially those on the list of names Jedi Skywalker has just given us."

"I didn't sense any lie in the hunter's voice, so I'm 90% they told the truth, but, the problem is-I don't think that those are  _all_ the names."

"Anyway, Skywalker, even if these people are all the people she's met with-it's enough to put us in very,  _very_ big trouble. These people alone, given even just a tiny piece of intel-they could turn everything we've worked to achieve into  _dust._ " General Rieekan said, agreeing with General Madine, and Luke went to reply, only to clutch his head in a bout of nausea.

"Were was that picture taken?" he asked, and Hooker replied curtly:"The New Republic Center for Development and Research, of course."

And at that, Luke really doubled over as the nausea hit him head on.

"What's wrong, Luke?" Leia asked in concern, but Luke just waved her off and excused himself, stating that he wasn't really feeling well and that he needed some fresh air.

He walked out - or rather, flat out ran away, and leant on the large wall-window that was in the great lounge of the facility, sliding down on it till the feeling of death that was crushing his chest gave way to pure, spine-chilling dread.

His comlink bleeped, and Luke shakily went to answer. "Skywalker here."

"Oh, thank the Force!" the voice of Hiashi Statura, his assistant at the New Republic Center for Development and Research brought Luke sharp to his senses. "Listen, boss-there's been a breach, at  _your_  vault."

That simple sentence alone shocked Luke at his very core, and the wayward Jedi Knight finally understood his earlier feeling of dread. "What - What did they take?"

"Your - your DNA sample." the voice on the other line said, and Luke dropped his comlink.

_Kriff. Kriff kriff kriff **kriff.**_

Luke staggered, stumbled, fell to the floor; screamed and screamed and _screamed_  as the Dark Side overtook the night and crushed him to the ground: and the Dark Side, like a twisted, manic dark mirror of his actions, screamed back: but it wasn't a cry of pain, no...it was the cry of a **newborn.**

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**And so Luke's odissey starts anew! What does the Dark Side of the Force have in store for him? Have you appreciated my reinterpretation of the Iraq War into the 'Rraq Massacre (I swear, I had no intention to offend anyone with it, if this is the effect it had)?**

**You'll discover more in the next chapters-in the meantime, Read & Review & Let me know if Finn has the Force or not-and enjoy the Star Wars dictionary!**

**StarWarsDictionary:**

**(1) CSF: the Coruscant Security Force acts more for the preservation of their control on Coruscant than for the good of its citizens.**

**(2) NRI: The New Republic Intelligence is kinda like the CIA and the FBI put together - and aims to control both the foreign and internal policies of the New Republic. Jengar Hooker is obviously based on J. Edgar Hoover, and Donnie Rassk...well, that's easy, come on. I only slightly changed the surname so it would feel more "alien".**

**(3) Anti-Human League: based on the EU organization, the Alien League, it is a anti-humans and anti-Jedi terrorist group masqueraded as a charity and thus able to get large numbers of supporters from many alien populacies.**

**(4) ISB: the Imperial Security Bureau was responsible for Operation: Cinder in the New Canon (a "punishment" operation posthumously commanded by Palpatine aimed to prevent various worlds from rebelling and aiding and/or joining the Rebel Alliance). They're still out for the New Republic's blood and they're kinda like KGB.**

**(5) Airen Cracken: a general in chargof the Rebellion's intelligence. Founded the NRI but (in this story) died soon after, enabling Jengar Hooker to take charge. A good man, he disliked Han Solo and believed that 'Ends justify the Means', albeit not in the Imperial way. During the Battle of Endor, he manned the laser turret of the _Millennium Falcon._**


	4. Police & Thieves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Luke Skywalker escapes a possibly fatally boring political meeting only to get robbed blind, interrogated, shot at, and finds himself doing all of this at the sound of a catchy reggae song stuck kn his head.

| Wanderer |  1\. Prologue: Someone I met at the bar 2\. Fathers and Sons 3\. Get on to work 4\. Police & Thieves 5\. Luke & Mara 6\. Psycho Killer 7\. Gods Save the Queen   
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| Rated: T - English - Hurt/Comfort/Mystery - Reviews: 5 - Published: 12-16-15 - Updated: 08-02-16 | id:11671703  
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**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**And so welcome to a brand new chapter of Star Wars: Dark Mirror! (And, once again, sorry if I've posted it so late...I was busy with the IMUN project - not a story, but an international school project - and all that jazz, trying to rock at the latest Math test - and since Math is not my strong subject, you can all guess how it went.)**

**But whatever.**

**I must say, I really appreciate all the following this story has got since its first chapter was published...the markedly LOW amount of reviews?**

**Not so much.**

**But whatever.**

**Just enjoy the chapter - and please, PLEASE Review & Recommend.**

**By the way, since Ken Leung, the actor portraying Admiral Statura, was forty-five at the time of The Force Wakens, and this story is set 27 years before TFA, I am making him a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old in this story, and giving him an original first name.**

**...On with the story, then!**

**Chapter Three: Police & Thieves**

_Not even a hour later._

Since he had gotten his internship at the New Republic Center for Development & Research and started working under the most peculiar of historians and researchers alike - Jedi Knight Lucas K. Skywalker himself - Hiashi Statura had never seen his boss so shaken.

He had seen him distant, unreceptive, bitter - but that was common with war veterans, Jedi or not. He'd learned to respect that - the man was a karkin' hero, he'd blown up the Death Star and killed more Sith that you could count, and even participated in the Liberation of Garel, which, coincidentally, was Statura's home world.

But this time, it was different.

Skywalker looked like someone who'd been put through a trash compactor and then ran over by a Star Destroyer, and then finally dealt the final blow by having a Hutt fall on hibm from the top of the Republica 500 skyscraper.

And that was the mildest way to put it.

The reason was pretty simple: Skywalker had put a batch of his blood in the NRCDR special vault, because apparently the combination of his DNA and the insanely high amount of Midichlorian per cell that his blood carried highly regenerative properties, and if reconverted to stem cells and allowed to multiplicate, said cells could be able to regrow even the most damaged tissues and cure some of the galaxy's worst diseases - not to mention cancer. And that would be just fine-if Skywalker's cells weren't incompatible to cloning.

Meaning, they'd mutate and become a cancer themselves. It didn't help that Skywalker's alleles were Oh-negative, no sir, because trying to stop the mutation with DNA from other allele types would just make things worse. And yet, Skywalker's tissue samples were so valuable that it was a no-brainer that someone would steal them-and of course, the Force only knew what could be done with them if they fell in the wrong hands.

And, Statura gathered from Skywalker's expression, that was exactly what had happened.

Hiashi watched as the CSF officer tried to squeeze out every little detail from a deadpan Luke Skywalker:

"And what has been stolen?"

"Blood."

"Whose?"

"Mine."

"Your blood." the officer smiled amusedly. "And of what utility would it even be for the thieves?"

"I have no idea. That is your job to discover it, officer. I'm just the victim." Luke shrugged, and the officer sardonically replied: "Just the victim, eh? And I suppose you have no idea of who could have done the deed, either."

"Quite the opposite, in fact." Luke stated, and produced a copy of the holo of Shira Brie he'd been showed by Hooker just a few hours before. "Do you recognize this woman, officer?"

"N-no, I don't." the officer paled visibly, and Luke decided to dig in further: "Strange, because she's known in all the Galaxy...Lumiya, the last Dark Lady of the Sith...one of the greatest enemies of the New Republic."

"Yes, but the CSF isn't the NRI." the officer smirked, quickly regaining his footing, and Luke countered: "Yes, but Coruscant is the seat of the New Republic...if the New Republic was to be attacked by this woman, the main target would therefore be Coruscant...and you are the Coruscant Security Force."

"We do our best to keep Coruscant safe from any threat, Mr. Skywalker, of that you can be sure." the officer hastily dismissed the subject, but Luke was unrelenting. "Of course you do. But I'd also like it if you rather focused on finding out wherever on Coruscant Shira Brie is hiding and  _what in the Nine Hells does she need my DNA for."_

"And why should you want to know? Why should you even care, when it is the job of the police and not of the Jedi to catch thieves." Luke could hear the sneer in the officer's voice, especially when he said the word 'Jedi'. Luke went to answer, but was stopped by a catchy rythmed music with laid-back singing.

_"Police & Thieves in the streets,_

_Oh yeah!_

_Scaring the nation with their_

_Guns and ammunition_

_Police & Thieves in the streets_

_Oh yeah!_

_Fighting the nation wi_ _th their_

_Guns and ammunition..."_

"Sorry." Statura apologized, and hastily fumbled for something in his jacket, and then the music was heard no more. "Just my 'player malfunctioning."

The CSF officer threw the teemager a dirty look, but Luke just raised an eyebrow and asked: "Is that an old Apklan model?"

"Yes, it was my father's. Why?" the boy queried, and Luke's face turned wistful. "I had a nearly identical one back in my teenage years on Tattooine. Sure, it was already old back then, but it was a novelty for such a backwater place. That a new hit?"

"Kinda. It's from a semi-underground group called 'The Klash City Rockers'. They're really cool, and this is called _Police & Thieves._" Hiashi eagerly explained, and Luke thought of how ironical the title felt, considering the CSF's brutality.

"Ah-ehm." the CSF officer in question coughed audibly to get their attention, and then said, albeit through his teeth: "If that's all you have to tell us, Mr. Skywalker, I shall proceed with the investigation. Though I doubt we'll manage much. All the security sensors and the HoloCCTV went dead during the theft."

"Wait a minute." Luke frowned. "We didn't know that. How can you know it, then?"

"Because all the NRCRD's cameras are controlled by the CSF." the officer smugly explained, but when Luke realized what he really meant, he was already gone.

"Kriff!" Luke swore and punched the wall, leaving a large dent in the metal; he then turned to Statura. "Put that music back on, kid, 'cause I'm feeling like I could kill all 'em police and thieves right now."

"O-ok." Hiashi sweatdropped; but complied all the same, while Luke closed his eyes, assuming a more relaxed posture.

_"From Genesis to Revelation_

_The next generation will be hear me_

_From Genesis to Revelation_

_The next generation will be hear me_

_And all the crowd comes in d_ _ay by day_

_No one stops it_

_In anyway_

_And all the peacemaker turn war officer_

_Hear what I sa-a-a-a-ay:"_

"So, um, boss, I guess we should head back to work." Statura paused the music once again, then apologizing. "It's just that, um, yesterday you didn't come to work, and we had an important project to work on..."

"Familial problems." Luke lied - well, it was more like a half-truth - but then just rubbed his eyes tiredly and stated: "But you're right, we shouldn't let that make us forget our work. C'mon, we've gotta get back to work."

'Work' for the stressed Jedi Knight and his assistant was a pretty funny term: you see, as Luke had never gone to college or university (good luck finding one on that dust bowl called Tattooine), he didn't have any specialization.

However, he also unfortunately was a genius mechanic,  _and_ a Jedi (thus someone with a deeper understanding of Biology thanks to the Force) who had almost perpetually scoured the Galaxy in the search for traces of the Old Jedi Order, in order to build his new own order.

In shorts, that meant that  _everyone_ in the NRCRD wanted his help - - and unfortunately, Luke could never refuse...he was being paid rather nicely, after all.

 

By eighteenteen-hundred-thirty-five, Galactic Standard Hour, however, Luke's nerves were a mess, due to the events of the night and the day before, and he wasn't able to concentrate anymore, as his mind always wandered back to Lumiya and what she could possibly be planning and why she'd even need to steal his DNA, or, for reasons he himself couldn't yet understand. It was almost as if he was drawn to her.

Thankfully, Statura decided to call it a day, stating that Luke couldn't work in his conditions, and they both made their way out of the building.

It had been a rough day and night, and Luke really wanted nothing more than to relax to the reggae sound of the Klash City Rockers' _Police & Thieves_, just like Statura had advised him to, even if the boy had decided not to hitch a ride but rather get back at his campus to catch up on his studies, as he had an important exham in a couple of days.

And that's just what Luke did.

_"Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah_

_Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah_

_From Genesis oh yeah_

_Police, police, police and thieves oh yeah_

_Scaring, fighting the nation_

_Shooting, shooting their_

_Guns and ammunition"_

And Jœ Strůmmər's singing relaxed him so much he didn't manage to see the speeder crashing right into him.

"KRIFF!" he cursed as he found himself airborne: luckyly, the other speeder had hit the front of his bike, and he hadn't been hurt, but, still...

...he was five kriffin' kilometers from the ground.

And still airborne.

Wasting no time, he acted quickly and propelled himself on the other speeder with the aid of the force, landing on its roof-his suspicions confirmed when it opened and the driver pointed a blaster straight at his face.

He narrowly managed to dodge the scorching beam, and thus wasn't hurt, but the shot in itself made his survival instinct - or rather, his PTSD - kick in once again, hand he punched his would-be-assassin straight in the face - the angry, dark voice thundering in his head at the tune of  _Kill! Kill!_

The assassin seemingly shrugged off the blow with little problem, smirking slightly despite the fact that Luke had just broken his nose, his voice sending chills down Luke's spine. "Glad you hit back. Would've been disappointed if you didn't put up a fight."

"I try." Luke shrugged, and punched the assassin in the face once again, before kicking the blaster out of his hand, as the speeder started to fly downwards erratically, the driver and the unexpected passenger duking it out in a fist fight.

And since no one was at the wheel, the speeder came crashing right into a terrace, the two occupants being thrown right through the door-window, the speeder sliding off the terrace to meet its doom, and the two still-fighting occupants went crashing through several pieces of furniture before actually _landing_.

And guess what, it was Luke's head the one that was dealt the final blow by the stone chimney.

The assassin was right upon him, ready to plunge the vibroknife into his throat, but was slammed away by two steady blaster bolts straight in the chest.

"Kriffin' Hell, Skywalker. Why it is that you almost always manage to find your way to my life?" an annoyed voice brought the bleeding Luke back to his senses. "Mara?"

"I told you not to call me that -GET THE KRIFF DOWN!" she shouted, tackling him to the floor - just as a blaster bolt from the still-alive assassin found its mark on her shoulder - and this time it was the fiery red-head's turn to slam headfirst into the wall and fall unconscious.

The assassin went for a hand grenade - but Luke grabbed Mara's blaster and shot it before the assassin could even throw it...making the whole room explode in a big great ball of fire.

_"Police, police, police & Thieves Oh yeah_

_Police, police, police & Thieves Oh yeah_

_Here come, here come, here come_

_The station is bombed_

_Get out get out get out you people_

_If you don't wanna get blown up!"_

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello people! Sorry for the late chapter, I had a huge case of writer's block. Don't worry about the cliffhanger, its function was to open the way for a Luke & Mara (or rather, a Luke VS Mara) chapter which will be out in two weeks if I'm fast enough. Or, more realistically, three weeks at most. Ken will also come back in said next chapter.**

**By the way, did you like my tribute to the Clash (here mentioned as "Klash City Rockers", which is also the name of one of their best songs), one of the greatest punk rock bands in history?**

**If you did (and even if you didn't), please leave a review.**


	5. Luke & Mara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robotic assassins, old flames and forgotten enemies returning seems to be what Luke Skywalker's life is all about as of late, particularly because the latter two categories happen to be one and the same. But as his family wonders what the heck is happening to him, he may discover that there's something more than a common enemy tying him to the mysterious redhead assassin he met in a bar last night...

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Yet again, so few reviews...I still can't understand what the Hell is wrong with this story...is it so boring? I'm not complaining about the views, hey, I don't mind my story staying in the underground, like, take, like, for example punk music: punk music should never have become a mainstream phenomenon, because punk rock was born as something against mainstream music and all its commercial-ness...but I'm digressing.**

**What I'd like is to know what you people think about my story, but it seems my wish shall never come true, so...**

**...On with the story, then.**

**Chapter Four: Luke and Mara**

"You have greatly disappointed me." the voice jostled Mara into awakeness - but she was quickly forced to re-evaluate this statement: she wasn't in her apartment anymore. There was only darkness, around her, and Cyclopean architecture that reeked of power - spires, towers, domes, pyramids, temples - everything emanated the warm darkness of magic - not the cold, supphocating, enthralling darkness of the Dark Side of the Force. And the voice which had brought her into this land was not that of her Lord and Master: this entity had to be even more powerful than Darth Sidious himself - if such a thing was even possible.

She let her gaze wander around; and for the briefest of moments, she caught sight of a lonely, strange figure: icy-eyed, grey-haired, fierce-eyebrowed, strangely-dressed, power-emanating. He seemed to be at place in this strange red house world: yet he felt out of his time, he felt like he countinuosly longed for _more_. He felt like he would disappear at any moment, if you were to take your eyes off him. And then he turned.

Twin shards of blue ice met jade emeralds, and frightened the man pointed at something behind Mara, who turned - only to come face to face with _herself_ as a cyborg Dark Lady with a lightwhip.

Mara stumbled back and went for the blaster - but it wasn't there. She stumnled back, and back, and back - at this, point, she just kept stumbling. And no matter how she ran, she kept stumbling, and the cyborg doppelganger kept gaining on her.

She looked at the strange man again, only to find him clutching at his head in pain, screaming a horrible, soundless death-cry out of sheer agony. And then he fell down, only to get back up as a new man. Red-skninned, scarred, with a black hooded cape and dark hair he pointed a finger at Mara, as if in accusation. Meanwhile, the cyborg had disappeared. In her place stood a man nearly identical to the caped one, only this onw was in much more casual clothes and looked younger, with a fringed brown leather jacket and a cowboy hat. Yet he too pointed his finger in accusation at her, and he too bore holes into her with his burning grey eyes.

"You ain't doing the greatest job, Mara Jade." said the one.

"You saw the woman. It is imperative that you kill her." said the other, and Mara stammered: "But that was me! And she's gone!"

"You only outran her." said the one.

"But for how long?" said the other.

"The Skywalker has cut the strings Palpatine had placed on you, " said the one.

"So now you can run." said the other.

"But can you outrun..."

"...Your very own fear?" they said in unison, and in unison thwy marched straight at her, like a one-man army.

"We showed you a memory of the past." said the one.

"You saw the half-human idiot in the box." said the other.

"He tried to run just like you." said the one.

"And you saw it with your eyes that he didn't get far." said the other.

"Who are you?" there was nothing Mara could use as a weapon; and she didn't trust the Force to help her out of this situation. Not in her own mind. "What do you want from me?!"

"We are the one and the other, and not in order of appearance." spoke the one.

"That is all you need to know." said the other.

"And we gonna show ya the future, babe." the one snapped his gloved fingers, and Mara found herself in a large, dark throne room which Mara immediately recognized. It was Palpatine's old throne room at Imperial Palace, and it looked and felt exactly like it always felt when Mara had angered Sidious and provoked his rage. The memory of the punishment still carved into Mara's brain, she almost began to hyperventilate as she saw the Emperor, looking enraged as on that fateful day - that day in which Sidious showed her he was _not_ her friend, that day she had oh so desperately tried to bury like she'd always managed with her emotions until now-

-Since when Sidious wore gloves?

That man couldn't be Sidious, Mara realized. Too big. Too young. Kriff, too dark. And yet, her cyborg self was facing him. What sort of twisted dream was this? Who were the two mysterious entities showing it to her?

She didn't even have the time to ask herself these question to see herself plunge the blade into the body of the mysterious Dark Lord, and him in turn force her to her knees with a tremendous bolt of Force Lightning. But _he_ didn't look to be hurt. And as her cyborg self crumbled to the floor, she felt the Dark Lord's malicious red eyes stare into her very soul, from the pure black void that was under the hood, and then she saw him raise his gloved hands to grab the folds of his hood, and then she saw those hands pulling the hood back; and then, she finally saw what was under the hood.

"NO! NOT YOU, IT CAN'T BE YOU!"

-But everything soon dissolved into a red, sun-scorched desert, and she was standing on the edge of a cliff, with a millennia-old red mountain overlooking the landscape with imponent indifference...and the man who had identified himself as the One staring back at her, standing by a speeder bike that looked like an old Harlan-Daveedzann model with...wheels?

"Welcome to the home of my ancestors, Mara Jade. The home of the Naabeehó Bináhásdzo...the Navajo Nation." he spread his arms wide, as if to encircle and embrace the whole landscape. "You're in the **Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii** , the 'valley of the rocks', in my ancestors' language."

"Why are you showing me all of this?" Mara questioned edgily, and the giant shrugged. "I know where I come from, Mara Jade. Do ya?"

"I know where I come from."

"Of course. As one of 'im many Emperor's Hands, Palpatine spoon-fed ya the right lies at the right time...he made you feel privileged, he acted all grandfatherly and was the parent y'never had 'cause he killed 'em personally or delegated the dirty work to Vader or the Inquisitorium..."

"Shut up."

"...and ya happily went along and did 'im biddin'...he had ya hooked, that dirty sod..."

"Shut up!"

"...And you never stopped to _think_ , did ya?"

"I said **SHUT UP!** "

And shut up he did, disappearing from sight as do nightmares when you wake up from one of them, yet, just like a nightmare, permanently carving himself inside her head, just behind the wall of sleep...sleep that she felt would never return after the dark side confrontation she saw in the dream.

"Mara?" she staggers back, and for a second, she doesn't understand what he's doing there. For a second, his face is horribly disfigured and concealed inside the void darkness of a black hood, his sky blue eyes twin pools of blood in the darkness of a black sclera: then he's just a good-natured farmboy with PTSD once again.

"Mara." he calls again, and Mara thinks back to the only other person who ever called her that. She thinks back to a woman, looking just like her but older and wiser, smiling down at her, as if she's in her arms. But isn't that her too, standing to the side, so young and so innocent, yet with eyes of poison green instead of Jade.

"Skywalker." she coldly regards him, silently praying that he hasn't felt the crack in her icy composure, the crack caused by the only truly happy memory she's ever had. "What are you doing still here?"

"Watching on you." his lips curl into a smile for the smallest fraction of a second. "I healed your shoulder wound-but I feel the other wounds, those that go deeper...they're sad."

"So what?" at the moment, it's the best reply she can muster, but it's not very effective. "Those wounds...they shaped you, didn't they?"

When no answer comes, he chuckles distantly. "I had a dream, while watching you. Of my mother, looking at me as I was born...so beautiful...but so sad. And then I saw her die. And...I think I saw your mother die, too. She had this halo of fiery red hair, and I saw a girl watching frightened...no, I saw two. Nearly twins...you were the younger one. You were afraid..."

"Shut up. You had no right to see that." she snarled, and he bitterly deaspanned at her: "Think I had a say in it?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"It was like I was trapped...bound to an electrified throne. And a cyborg with Sith-like eyes that were once of poison green...eyes I once loved, strapping me to the throne, while a hooded man stood by. The one and the other both watched. And then the hooded man took off his hood...and it was like looking into a cracked mirror...a twisted, **_dark_** mirror." then he turns back at her, his sincere sky blue gaze so unsettling. She feels herself reddening: she tells itself it's because she's angry because, even after what he's done to her life, he still has the guts to knock at her door or, rather, crash through her window, and she'd like to see him for the criminal she oh so _knows_ he is, but all she sees is a farmboy with a head full of dreams with the damaged soul of a wanderer who's walked in a war too big for him and tried to get out, but never fully managed to do it. He sees the boy gazing in shock at the charred bodies of his aunt and uncle, who gave their lives to protect him, she feels the parent's love that brought them to sacrifice, and this remembers her of the fiery-haired woman Skywalker said was her mother, and then he's an insomniac wing commander writing endless letters to the parents of his dead comrades.

And then, immediately thereafter, a mad frenzy lights him up, and he grabs Mara's arm and pulls her up and standing, sky locking into jade, but all Mara saw in those eyes was madness. "The little girl! The one standing frightened! She's her!"

The position they were in sent a trigger in Mara's mind and she almost punched him away, but Luke calmed down as if having an epiphany, and his aura, for reasons unknown to both of them, seemed to calm down Mara, too.

"She's the one who set us up." he spoke more calmly, and Mara pushed him away, shaking her head in denial. "No - no, I refuse to believe you. You - you must be lying again, like when - "

"Like when? Wake up. You've seen it with your own eyes. You've seen them. You've seen that the one and the other were right." Luke spread his arms wide, leaning towards her. "I never ever lied to you, Mara Jade. The Force...and those who are one, and other, with it, always send us messages, peeks into the great unknown that is our destiny. It wasn't a coincidence we met in that bar, it wasn't a coincidence that we met in that bar, that you spared me, that we met again, that you decided to help me, that I crashed right into your home...that we shared the same dream."

"You're mad." Mara Jade spat. "Palpatine always said the Force was just a mere tool. How can it communicate with us?"

" _Forget about Palpatine, for kriff's sake!"_ Luke shouted, and ranted on. "Wake UP! Lumiya is still alive, and her plans involve both of us. We have a chance to get a clue on what-s really happening behind the scenes, and you wanna throw it away?!"

"No, YOU wake up, farmboy!" she shouted right in his face, and pushed him back. "There's no Jedi nor Sith, no future, no destiny! We've been set up, you say? Well, everyone has been set up! Life itself is just a set-up! Everyone thinks he's got some great destiny, but they still screw up, because they've got no destiny, just their own wrong choices, and you, Luke Skywalker, are the greatest example of this."

"Maybe you're right." Skywalker didn't flinch; not one bit. "But destiny itself is made of the consequences of the choices we make...And I've always faced them."

"Since when?" she questioned, and he extended his mechanical hand for her to take. "Since this."

Mara didn't take it.

"Please, Mara. We'll get to her, I promise you. But we need to be together."

And as Mara's hand twitched in his direction, the owner of said hand slowly became aware of a hand that twitched in the other room, the one that had been broken into by a crashing speeder with what _should_ have been a corpse lying sprawled and bleeding on the floor, and yet with his hand _twitching._

**-Line Break-**

"Hey, champ!" a familiar voice called from behind Ken, despite knowing how much the boy hated that nickname. And who could it be, but Han Solo himself?

"So, how's it goin'?" the former smuggler asked, but Ken saw right through the question and commented: "You want to know where Luke is. Am I right?"

"Well, in normal conditions I'd love to chat about your day at school, champ, but Leia was a bit worried after your message this morning, and when Leia gets worried..." the older man trailed off, and Ken nodded sagely. "She felt it too, right?"

"So she said. C'mon, let's walk, and I'll take you home." Han nodded towards his parked speeder, and Ken cocked an eyebrow. "What makes you think you won't need me?"

"What do you mean?" Han inquired, puzzled, and Ken shrugged. "Maybe because I know where and with whom Luke is right now, and no one can hide better than me?"

Han looked at him in confusion for a moment, before first realization, and then a cheeky, lop-sided grin that had become his signature feature creeped into his face. "Hop on, Champ. We're going Luke-hunting."

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Man, I really need to do something for my writer's block.**


	6. Chapter 6: The Zombie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade dwelve deeper into the mistery that is the set-up they've been trapped in, an enemy thought defeated rises back up to strike again, and a friend comes in to help...

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**JHello, fellow AO3 authors. I thank all those who have followed and are still following this story you're reading right now, even if I took so long to put another chapter out. I recognize many of you will be angry with me for getting sidetracked, but still, you're all getting a big thank you for your prolonged support. e, I'll just keep writing this story, because I want to complete it at all costs, because I consider it my personal epitaph to the Star Wars Legends continuity, of which I was a devout aficionado, and a way to create something original that could easily merge into the New Canon, which is already vibrating with the energy of a whopping load of fanfictions.**

**That being said, we can move...**

**...On with the Story, then!**

**Chapter Six: The Zombie**

"Ssshh."  
"I know, I've felt it."  
"Ssshh."  
"I thought I'd blown him up for good."  
"Would you just stop talking, Skywalker? I can feel him getting up."

True to Mara's words, the mysterious, charred assassin was slowly getting up. If you'd seen him when he still had the right half of his face, and when his right arm had still been connected to his shoulder and not reduced to a skeletal, malfunctioning dangling from a torn socket, you'd have thought he was an Arkanian Derivate/Pureblood Arkanian hybrid suffering from an inverted form of albinism, with that shockingly ink-black skin and hair decorated by blood-red tattoos, which would have been quite funny to think of, but rather scarring-for-life to meet.

And yet, if you looked just past this nightmarish details, you'd see that his eyes were just a pair of red-lit optical receptors covered by a synthetic black eyeball, and if you stopped to look at their shape, and if you'd majored in Jedi history, you'd have done a double take.

For the shape in question was that of the Bogan symbol, which represented the first Darksiders that would go on to start the Hundred-Year Darkness that split the ancient Je'Daii order into Jedi and Sith.

It was so eerie that it almost made both Luke and Mara want to run, as they approached the door that lead to the charred and half-destroyed room they'd left him in, believing him to be dead - but after all, who wouldn't do the same, when their enemy has been shot multiple times to the chest and has taken a blitz grenade head-on?

The answer was nobody, especially when the cybernetics (which were the only thing that could cast a shadow of doubt on the aforementioned line of thinking) were of a design so shockingly near-organic that surpassed even the most well-crafted of Cylo masterpieces, and heavily resembled Luke's design for the Hand. Could it be that they'd finally managed to produce midi-chlorians by stabilizing the stem cells, something Luke and all the other brainiacs of the New Republic Center for Development and Research had been racking up their brains to no avail?

Probably. But curiosity would have to wait, overpowered as it was by the fighter's instinct that screamed to Luke _Get down!_ And yet Luke's head moved for his eyes to ask for Mara's approval, and his right hand slowly moved to the lock to disable it.

Wrongest.

Move.

Ever.

Another song (not of the Klash City Rockers but of the Karkin' Hutts this time around) had already begun blaring from the somehow-still-intact music-player Luke had been listening to as he fought the mysterious cybernetic assassin.

It went like this and somehow the tempo coincided with that of the fight:

_I can't seem to face up to the facts_  
_I'm tense and nervous and I_  
_Can't relax_  
_I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire_  
_Don't touch me I'm a real live wire_

Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, away

Luckily both Luke and Mara were seasoned fighters and wouldn't let a mere punk rock song distract them from the fight; shame the same went for their enemy.

And as the drums closed in, the two Force-users did the same with the cybernetic assassin, who merely raised his damaged arm to their incoming blades. It was made of durasteel, already made fragile by the previous explosion. Under the pressure of two lightsabers at the same time, it would have certainly broken, allowing the blades to slice clean through the rest of him...and yet his forearm was detached from the elbow before the blades could have a chance to break through his defenses...and exploded.

"Get down, farmboy!" Mara shouted to her unlikely ally, before tackling him to the ground, the blast sending them tumbling across the room, and they'd have died - had Luke not shielded them both with the Force.

"Sithspawn!" Luke cursed, and Mara glared at him. He hastily decided to change the subject to a more pressing matter. "This guy is crazy."

"And you're going to owe me an apartment, farmboy."

"Well, we already owe each other's lives perhaps twice or thrice over, can't we reach a bargain?" his poor attempt at a joke received not an answer from Mara, but rather from the assassin himself, in the form of an energy bolt that sizzled right past Luke's ear and cut through the wall like butter.

Mara chuckled at his 'I've-just-shitted-myself-face' and replied: "Maybe later, farmboy."

_Psycho Killer_  
_Qu'est-ce que c'est_  
_Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better_  
_Run run run run run run run away_  
_Psycho Killer_  
_Qu'est-ce que c'est_  
_Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better_

"Would you _please_ stop calling me 'farmboy'?"

"Will you stop butting into my life?"

"Pot callin' the kettle back." Skywalker grunts and chuckles at the same time, staggering back as another of those condensed beams slams into his blade, almost piercing straight through his heart, his muscles straining and his veins bulging, his back slamming against the wall and sending spikes of pain through his muscles. "A little help would be greatly appreciated."

Mara glares at him, sure. She's done nothing but glare at him since she's first met him, but then a lightbulb lights itself inside her head and she added her blade to Luke's, and the beam was deviated to the side. Then, she slowly rotated the blade...and the beam went with it, nearing the cyborg's midsection inch by inch. And the cyborg saw what they were doing, and from his still-intact hand bolts of electricity flew at Luke, making him drop to his knees, with Mara remaining the only one to shield the two from the beam. "Kriff! Skywalker, don't die on me yet!" Mara shouted, trying to help him to get back up through the Force - but it seemed that the bolts had sent him into PTSD, making him relive the harrowing moments during which he was tortured by Palpatine's Force Lightning, even going as far as making him remember the mad, spit-laced cackle of the darkness incarnate that was the old man that was making him have a taste of _Hell_ , even making him relive the utter _pain_ that torture had made him feel, even going as far as to make _Mara_ feel it as she tried to enter Luke's mind to force him to get back up onto his feet, making her _live_ it even as the dark giant grabbed the cackling old man and threw him down the well. It was something truly beyond any punishment Palpatine had ever inflicted upon her after a failure, but she kept pushing on, because she HAD to get him up, or they'd both die there and then, and thus she kept pushing on, pushing on through what felt like the nightmarish delirium of a psycho killer, a barrage of fear and darkness kept in check only by the sheer light the man's soul emanated, exemplified into that simple act of love that had brought the Executioner to save the Jedi that screamed for help at his feet, that had made the Slave defy and kill the Master. She focused on that moment, knowing that it was what she'd have to reach to wake Skywalker up, and kept pushing and pushing and pushing until she grabbed it and _squeezed it with a single thought._

_You start a conversation you can't even finish it._  
_You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything._  
_When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed._  
_Say something once, why say it again?_

"GAH!" Skywalker screamed as he bolted upright, the intrusion having reawakened him-and rather painfully at that. "That kriffin' hurt!"

"Save it for later," Mara growled under the strain of the killer's beam, and then added in a tone that to Luke sounded almost pleading, coming out of her lips: "And come help me, farmboy."

Immediately Luke came to her aid, almost as if he'd been compelled by her strained jade gaze, and the beam started rotating back towards the cyborg psycho as both Mara and Luke screamed under pressure in unison:

_Ce que j'ai fait ce soir là_  
_Ce qu'elle a dit ce soir là_  
_Réalisant mon espoir_  
_Je me lance vers la gloire, OK_  
_We are vain and we are blind_  
_I hate people when they're not polite_

And with the last note of the line coincided the explosion that sent them flying, straight through the still-open door, and as they got up and dusted themselves off, Mara took the opportunity to make another sarcastic remark to her new 'partner in crime' (not that he was so bad of a fighter, actually): "Well, this went we -"

(ins Ohs)

"No more fooling around, please." what little remained of the cyborg and his endoskeleton managed to spit out of his damaged vocoder as it stepped through the hole it had blown through the wall, the distorted tone making even the word 'please' sound like a threath. "Boss wants both of you. So better come with me with your own legs, Skywalker."

"You can tell your dear Lady Lumiya to fuck off, for all I care." Mara managed to choke out, despite the metal fingers (or were those claws?) applying just enough pressure on her throat not to crush it. "There's only one Emperor I've ever served... and he turned out to be a two-timing, deceiving, manipulating, cheating, abusive, heartless..."

"...Bastard? But of course. Lady Lumiya made sure you could find all the evidence proving this just after she arranged the first meeting between you and our little Jedi Knight here." the cyborg's metallic mouth made a strange sound as it clacked against his vocoder. It was almost like... a cackle? "You'd like to know the truth, don't you? About the little girl and the woman in your dreams? Lady Lumiya will tell you everything... and once you get the irony of it, I can assure you you'll DIE of laughter... just like it happened to me."

Luke could only groan in pain as he tried to get up, and he definitely was not in the mood to reply to the enigmatic speaking of a wise-cracking zombie cyborg. He couldn't even think fully straight - and the only thought in his head had nailed itself in his skull so deep it hurt like all the Nine Corellian Hells. And the thought was: Save Mara.

And of course, the cyborg had noticed. "You're both gonna come with me either way, Jedi. Better do it with your legs... or the lady gets it. Believe me."

Believe me

Believe me

Believe me

B-KCHOOM!

"I believe you." came the equally snarky reply from the lips of a most familiar former smuggler, as the now-headless-and-hopefully-dead-at-last cyborg released his hold on Mara Jade's throat before uncerimoniously crumbling down in a heap to the dirty floor. And out of that same hole in the wall stepped Han Solo, sporting his ever-present, cocky lop-sided grin. "So who's the new girl, kid?"

"Mara Jade." the 'girl' in question refused the offered hand as she pulled herself up, rubbing her sore troath. "And I'm not one of his 'girls'."

"But he'd so like it to be this way." a messy mop of jet-black hair almost falling over a pain of icy grey-blue eyes poked through that very same hole, and poked he did, he poked fun at the misfortunes of his adoptive father.

"You're the woman who told Luke about Lumiya, ain't ya?" Han's sardonic smile disappeared, and wisecracking smuggler Captain Han Solo gave place to no-nonsense, right-down-to-business New Republic General Han Solo. It didn't seem to faze Mara, however, as she answered: "I am. Turns out the Emperor is not the only Sith who's double-crossed both me and farmboy here."

"That means we're on the same side, then." Han remarked, fighting back a snicker at his brother-in-law's new nickname, while the farmboy in question sent him a murderous glare.

"I guess so." Mara replied distantly, remembering what she saw into Luke's mind. She believed in his innocence now that she'd seen it with her own eyes, what had happened on the Death Star. Yet, she still couldn't make sense of that single-worded, desperate plea Luke had screamed to Vader during the excruciating torture. Because that single, simple word had used to call Vader was this.

**_Father._ **

**-Line Break-**

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**The song is 'Psycho Killer' by the Talking Heads, remade into the Karkin' Hutts for this chapter. I chose two great names of Punk Rock for this chapter and the one before the previous one to deepen the urban tone I've been trying to give to this story (what with being Coruscant the epitome of 'urban' and all that stuff...I basically made it to be as unstable as 1970s' London, N.Y. and L.A., with the New Republic being still new and frail, with the dark and edgy tone the Legacy-era novels possessed) but I don't feel like it's coming around the way I envisioned it, so there's just gonna be like two or three more songs to highlight the social and political tension that is blended into the background of this story.**

**That being said, until next time, folks.**


	7. 7. Into A Splinter of the Mind's Eye can Gods Save the Queen?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saved by a cybernetic assassin by his brother-in-law and best buddy Han Solo, Luke Skywalker finds himself entangled in a Force bond with Mara Jad, the woman who, just a couple weeks before, had tried to kill him.  
> Could things get any worse?

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Here I am again, fellow fanfictioners, once again presenting you with a brand new chapter of Star Wars: Dark Mirror (and apologizing for not having wished a happy May the 4th to you this thursday. May you forgive me, and May the 4th be with You - - even if today is the 8th!)**

**We'd left our favorite sadly-now-not-canon-anymore pairing (Luke x Mara), reeling from a strange vision of both the past and future, only to be faced with a seemingly unkillable Arkanian cyborg in their hands, sotuation from which they had to be rescued by a very unlikely party made up of Luke's adopted son Ken (those of you who have read the series of novels starting with** **_The Glove of Darth Vader_ ** **will already be familiar with him) and everybody's favorite smuggler, who is also one of the newest additions to J.J. Abrams cinematographical body count. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, of course I'm talking about HAAAANNN SOOOOLOOO!**

**Deceased members of the Star Wars cast apart, it's best if, after this brief recap, we get back...**

**...On with the story, then!**

**Chapter Seven: Into A Splinter of the Mind's Eye can Gods Save the Queen?**

"Wow. That's one Corellian Hell of a story." Ken commented, after hearing of Luke and Mara's vision, and Han commented: "I agree with Champ here. But since Luke too has experienced it..."

"Are you implying that I'm a liar?" Mara Jade glared at him, her tone sharp and deadly as a vibrorazor, as much as her jade eyes. Han merely looked at her and shrugged, explaining: "Of course not, Jade. I can tell a liar when I see one. But since you are a former Emperor's Hand, I'm a little concerned about your allegiances in this story."

"Allegiances?" Mara snorted, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Don't make me laugh, Solo. I have no allegiance anymore. Even the man that raised me and had my blind trust turned out to be nothing short of a karkin' manipulative bastard. Because of that, I have no reason to kill your brother-in-law anymore, but his Sith ex-girlfriend has tried to make us kill each other, so we're both out for revenge. Plain and simple."

"Revenge." Han drawled, and turned to Luke. "Didn't you tell me that revenge was the path to the Dark Side, kid?"

"It is. But I'm not going to play the sitting duck as Shira Brie - Lumiya - ruins my life once again." Luke replied, his gaze firm and hardened. "Plus, I need to discover something."

"Discover what?"

"Me and Mara shared a vision, Han. I need to know what it meant."

"It could have been a trick by Lumiya. She is a master of deceiving, after all..." Ken offered, sitting next to Luke and looking at his adoptive parent with his sad grey eyes. "...And she's willing to do everything to see you dead. You almost got killed, Luke. I don't want to lose another father."

"You won't, Ken. I made a promise, remember?" Luke smiled earnestly, and slung an arm around his son's shoulders, embracing him as they pulled themselves up. "Come on. We better go before the authorities arrive."

As they climbed into Han's speeder, a part of Mara felt a sharp pang of envy at the bond the two shared. Palpatine had never really been with her when it mattered...the only comfort was his constant presence in her head, something which, now that she thought back of it, struck her as something more claustrophobic and perverse than comforting. Her every thought, continuously scanned by the same man whom it was by now safe to say that he'd made her an orphan...

_He's probably the one who made me an orphan, too._

A voice resounded in her head, and for a moment she felt threatened, but then she realized it was just Skywalker. Almost as if he'd taken Palpatine's place in her head.

_I'd never invade your mind, Mara._

_Then why are you doing it now?_

_It's not as if I can control it._

_What do you mean?_

_It seems as if we formed a Force Bond, when you reached inside me not to make give up, in our fight against the cyborg._

_A Force Bond?_

_Yes. It's a very rare event...and..._

_And what?_

_You may not like it._

_I may not like what, Skywalker? Spit it out._

_Well, it's kind of...unbreakable._

_..._

_Mara?_

_..._

_Mara, are you okay?_

_...Why can't you ever leave me alone?_

_I didn't choose this, Mara._

_I just want to lead a karkin' normal life dammit! I never wanted you to butt in, to shatter what little I had and then crush the pieces with your boots?_

_Well, I wanna have a normal life too! What do you think, that_ _I_ asked _to be pulled into this? With a bad case of PTSD and a son who feels guilty about his own homosexuality, and a mean streak of bad luck that kills off every possible relation I may develop?_

_Why do you keep being a Jedi, then? You know all too well that your kin have brought the worst disgraces ever on the Galaxy and its people. The Hundred-Year Darkness. The Sith. Exar Kun. The Great Hyperspace War. The Great Purge. Why do you keep being a Jedi, if everyone around you, innocent or not, keeps dying?_

_Because - Because it's the only way for me to understand._

_Understand? Understand what?_

_The Galaxy is a mess. The Force seeks balance. This situation will never change, because it's the natural state of things. And the natural state of things has reduced me from a star-gazing farmboy to a psychologically wrecked veteran. I need to understand how I fit into this, how Ken fits into this, how Han and Leia and their kid and_ everyone _fit into this. And I can only do it by trusting in the Force, and in the Jedi Code. And..._

_And?_

_I wanna know how YOU fit into all of this, Mara. I've never found someone so different and yet so similar. You came into my life unexpectedly. And just as unexpectedly, you forced me out of my own misery. Gave me back the strenght I needed to fight._

_It was just - it was just self-preservation, Skywalker, the cyborg would have killed us both._

_It wasn't, Mara. I_ felt _it. You didn't want me to die._

 _Oh yes I do instead._ Mara pushed back, channelling all her hatred, or her jealousy, all her anger at the man for whom she feared she was beginning to feel something more than pity. _You say that we are the same, that we have equally suffered. That we both have lost everything. But you're a liar, Skywalker. A hypocrite._

 _Oh,_ I'm _the hypocrite now?_

 _Yes. Because you still have a family. You managed to build yourself a new family once you lost your own. A family that loves you, and don't you dare tell me I'm wrong because I can_ feel _it! I feel i, through you, and..._

_And?_

_And...it hurts. It hurts too much._

_Mara...I'm sorry._

_You're always sorry. Even when it's my own fault for being too weak not to let these useless emotions take hold of me._

_Mara, you're not weak. You're one of the strongest women I've ever met, if not the strongest. You just...you crave and tet at the same time you fear love._

_Because it's a weakness._

_Maybe, but it's also one of our greatest strenghts. Love is something to be cherished. The whole Universe obeys Love._

_How can I cherish it if I have never known it?_

_I could show you - -_

_Seriously, you're trying to ask me out now?_

_Maybe after this whole mess is over._

_Okay, I can definitely hear you chuckle inside here._

_Well, I'm not gonna lie about it: you're one of the most successful relationships I've ever had so far._

_You gotta be kidding me._

_Aha! This time_ I _can definitely hear_ you _chuckling inside here._

_Just because an 'us' is so damn karkin' far-fetched, Skywalker._

_You should laugh more. It makes you - -_

_Makes me what?_

_I was gonna say 'beautiful', but right now I ain't all that sure that you've genuinely lost all intent to kill me, so I'll keep my mouth shut._

_You better._

_But seriously, Mara, is it just a coincidence that we've experienced the same vision, that we formed a Force Bond. I still think that it was the Force that brought us together. That the Force_ wants _us together - -_

 _Well, what_ I _want from the Force right now is to make sense. Why should it have brough us together, if what you say is true?_

_Why should we be together._

_We shouldn't, indeed. Everyone you've tried to get close to has ended up dead. Everyone I've tried to rebuild my life with has ended up dead._

_You should have more faith in the Force._

_Coming from the guy who's only started to have it once again? Oh please. My master had thought me the Force was only a means to an end. I never wished for it._

_All you ever wished for was a family, wasn't it?_

_And you adventure._

_Well - -_

_And later, to settle down and lead a quieter, normal life. We can feel_ everything _of each other, remember?_

_I remember, but it- -_

"- -'d be best if both of you just did shut up." Ken's voice snapped, breaking them out of their conversation.

"I'm trying to focus."

"Right. Sorry Ken." Luke apologized, and as Mara looked again at the messy-haired kid trying to use that weird ability - a Force Bubble of sorts or something else along the lines of that- that had enabled her to speak the name LUMIYA without the outside world noticing just the day before, and the kid looked back at her with those icy grey-blue eyes of his, for the first time in her life, former-Emperor's-Hand-now-turned-bounty-hunter Mara Jade felt like an ass.

And she definitely did not like the experience.

-Line Break-

"Sis...sister." the little red-haired girl (who couldn't have been more than two) smiled as she pointed to the toddler that her mother - - a beautiful, green-eyed woman that looked for all intents and purpose, a goddess - - was holding out to her, smiling happily at the both of them. "Yes. She's your sister, sweetheart. Her name is..."

"...Unimportant." that deep breathing, that skull-like mask, that feeling of pure self-hatred, the long black cloak...it was like Fear Itself had come knocking at their door.

"I suppose it's useless to ask how you found me." the woman icily regarded the Boogeyman, who nodded, prompting her to continue: "I suppose it's useless to ask you to spare us, either. You have rid yourself of everything, so why should it be any different with you?"

The Boogeyman didn't answer, and unclipped his sword from his belt, its blood-red blade frightening the younger girl...all the while fascinating her older sister, as their mother kep going. "I see. You've become a Sith'ari like Darth Bane and Darth Malgus and the Eternal Emperor. The perfect tool for Sidious to manipulate into killing your brethren."

"You are not my brethren anymore." The Boogeyman replied, raising his blade. "You are enemies of the Empire. And as such, you must die."

"Fine." the woman said, looking back at her daughters one last time, as a tear ran down her cheek. "Just make it quick."

And that was the only wish the Boogeyman granted her.

The two daughters said nothing as the woman uncerimoniously fell to the floor, her head to one side and her body to the other, but their eyes spoke louder than their voices could have done. And so the Boogeyman didn't have the strenght to slay them as he did with their mother.

And as everything faded away, the woman's head stopped rolling...and stared deep into Mara Jade's soul, with those vibrant green eyes

"No."

those loving green eyes

"Stop it."

those judging green eyes

"Stop it, I said!"

those dead green eyes

"STOP STARING AT ME!" Mara screamed at the top of her lungs, and strong arms encircled her frame, holding her as she trashed out violently at the nightmare. "Stop it, Mara! You gotta snap outta it!"

"STOP IT! STOP IT, PLEASE!"

"Mara, calm down! You're safe! You're safe!" the owner of those arms reassured her as they toppled to the floor, getting caught in the covers, and as she turned back at him in a frenzy, he hugged her tight and softly spoke, nothing but sincere caring in his sky blue eyes: "You're safe, Mara. I'm with you. I'm with you."

And with that, Mara finally broke down, grasping the man's black shirt and soaking it with her tears, and as violent sobs rocked her lithe but powerful frame, all that Luke could do was to soothingly rub her back in circles, whispering nonsenses into her ear, hugging her close as she curled up in a ball, and they stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, until Mara had cried out all the tears she was never allowed to cry in her life.

"It was horrible, Luke." Mara sais at last as she laid with her back against Luke's muscled chest, staring a thousand yards away into nothingness. "I saw your father kill my mother..."

"I'm sorry - -"

"...and I saw Lumiya."

"How?"

"She was young...she was a child...and I was with her." Mara let herself slide down until she could stare into Luke's eyes as she said this: "She's my sister, Luke. That's why she's doing all of this. She was jealous of me since she was a baby, and even more as I forgot her, and our mother. But she didn't forget. She never had such a luxury."

"But we can." Luke replied, their faces nearing steadily, inch by inch. "We can forget where we come from, who we are and why we fear and hate. If only for a few momenths."

"Yeah." Mara replied, and each of them felt the other's hot breath on their mouths. "If only for a few momenths."

And with that, their mouths met, and everything melted, and Sith Ladies and revenge plots and danger meant nothing to them both as they joined their bodies as they'd been joined in mind...if only for a few moments.

**-Line Break-**

"Gods." Luke breathed out as they laid on the bed, too tired to even lift a finger. "I'm out like a light."

"And I never thought that the Force could enhance _sex_ of all things." Mara replied. "It was awesome."

"I second that." Luke chuckled, and rolled on his side so he could hug Mara. "I've never felt these things with any other woman before, Mara..."

"And?... I can feel an 'and' coming, farmboy. Remember, we're Force-bonded."

"...and I don't want you to end up like every other woman I've been with before." Luke bitterly finished. "It's the old 'everyone close to the hero dies' cliché, I know. But it's all too real, and it's been ruining lives since I was nineteen."

"Kriff that cliché. You just have the worst case of bad luck in the Universe, Skywalker." surprisingly, Mara laughed. Again. "It's either that, or the Force having a really weird sense of humor."

"I guess." Luke said, looking out of the window at the thousand billion lights that lit the streets of Coruscant, and then back into Mara's beautiful green eyes. "I promise it won't end that same way with you, Mara."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Luke." Mara replied, softly, and then cupped Luke's cheek. "You're the first guy I've tried my hand at romance with that hasn't ended up hating me, you know that? I want to savor this, while it lasts."

"Because tomorrow, we'll have an angry Sith Lady to face, and everything could happen?" Luke chuckled, and Mara hit him on the arm. "No. Because it's just how life goes. People are different from each other. Sometimes they argue. Sometimes they fight. Someyimrs they lie and sometimes they tell the truth, and I really don't know what's worse."

"I know." Luke replied with a grim nod, flexing his cybenetic right hand. "My family is proof enough of that, messed up as it is. But at least, I got a son. I got Ken. And... Force knows how I'm not enough for him. He needs a mother. Leia can't fill those shoes while she's too busy to even properly take care of her own son."

"How sweet." Mara commented, and then insecurely admitted: "If there's something I'm not cut for, farmboy, it's being a mother. I'm an assassin, kriff!"

"Don't worry, there's always worse he could pick." dripping with sarcasm, a voice roused them from their self-pitying, anda they turned to see Ken, standing at the window, a blaster in his hand.

"Ken!" Luke screamed in outrage as both he and Mara became redder than her hair, hastily covering themselves up. "What are you doing there?!"

"Couldn't sleep." the boy shrugged, and Luke sighed: "Is everything okay, Ken?"

"Same as usual. Though the guys at school know better now, because of my little...episode" Ken sat down by the huge window, and sighed: "They're all scared. And they're not the only ones."

"What do you mean?" Luke frowned, and Ken snapped: "I mean I kriffin' shot three guys away a few days ago, just because I had a broken nose. I can create a kriffin' Force shield to hide from basically anything, even from you. I can sneak on a trained assassin and steal her handgun without being noticed. And I'm kriffin' _fourteen!_ "

"I know how you feel." Mara said, bitterly. "Imagine a girl, who at fourteen already knows more ways to kill a man that you could hope to count, who is forced to kill any and every friend she might make."

"And that's you at my age." Ken nodded, and then there he was, just like his father, glancing at her again, as if he seriously believed she could be even remotely capable of _mothering._

"Again, you might be the only one crazy enough to hook up with him for good." Ken giggled, and Mara fought the urge to throw a pillow at him. Then Ken turned serious again. "Luke, remember when you told me how you'd been afraid, between Bespin and Endor, to follow the same path your father followed just because you shared his blood?"

"I do." Luke replied, already not liking where this was going - - not one bit - - and Ken nodded. "Good. Because I'm feeling ecactly like that."

"I doubt your father was worse than Vader." Mara remarked, and Ken spat, just as dryly: "My father was Emperor Palparine's clone son, and you knew it, so I could feel all too well that that was the first thing you thought upon seeing me, ain't I right?"

He was right. He was Palpatine's spawn. Heir to the Empire or whatever remained of it. Potential bringer of peace to the Galaxy. Potential new tyrant out to destroy it. And here he was, adopted by his worst enemy.

"I just believe it." was all she ended up saying, in the end. "Couldn't believe that from someone like Palpatine could generate someone that could generate someone like you."

"And I thank the Force for that. I really do." Ken replied bitterly. "He's the only thing we have in common, isn't he? That's why you feel so hostile."

"Not hostile, just...conflicted." Mara replied. "I'm conflicted about a lot of things, lately. And being conflicted it's something I'm not used to. To tell the truth, I'vd never been conflicted before."

"That's the catch that comes with free will." Ken snarked, getting up from the floor and walking up to them. "I could help you with it, actually."

"You could?" Mara raised a disbelieving red eyebrow, and Luke remarked: "Ken's something of a Force genius, when it comes to the powers of the mind. He and I...we've got a Force Bond, like me and you. And incredibly, he's managed to reach into it. Make the two bonds one with each other, a unique three-way Bond, almost unconsciously. It's something unheard of."

"Or perhaps he was just seeking attention and closure like every other child. I did it a lot, once...but ceased to do it a little bit more with every social skill I lost." Mara remarked self-consciously, and then turned to Ken: "Just...don't look into the stuff Luke and I did earlier, okay? It's kinda private for a woman. Not to mention it'd be damn creepy."

"Relax. It's not like I'd find anything interesting in it. Besides, I have no intention of seeing my foster father naked." Ken remarked, then breathed in: "Well, here goes nothing."

**-Line Break-**

"What in the Corellian Nine Hells is this place?"

"I don't have the slightest clue." Mara replied, recognizing the ominous throne room of her first vision. Only this time, there was no madman in Inquisitor trappings slaying Lumiya, nor crackling green lightning, nor middle-aged guys with starfighter-bench-pressing eyebrows running away, and no fraggin' grand canyons nor cyclopean cities of a time when time (or rather, its Web) was still being created by robe-and-skullcap-wearing politicians with ridiculous gauntlets and Eyes that sure as Hell didn't bring any harmony.

Only dust, wind and silence. Deafening silence.

The walls, she realized. The walls had been torn down.

"Because you saw what was beyond them." a voice explaijed cryptically, sending chills down her spine as she felt dark, burning her eyes on her back. "The Wall of Lies you'd shielded yourself with while you were in the Darkness has been torn down by the Last Jedi at your left, enabling you to see the truth...but only glimpses of the Past and the Future, was what we allowed you to see."

"Why?" Mara demanded, angrily turning to face the Man in Black. The Other? Or the One? She didn't know. All she knew was that she was mad at him. "Why? Why have you showed the questions to me, but not the answers?"

"Because that's what writers do." the other guy - - or the One? - - smiled as he approached them, from the opposite direction. Funny. It seemed that every time the two appeared together, they always did so opposite each other. "And because the Game's much more fun this way."

"What Game?" Luke questioned, and the One replied: "The Game of Gods. Which, this time, is double the Game...an' double the Fun."

"I'm not following you." Luke frowned, and turned to Mara, who just shrugged, as if to say: I'm just as lost on this one as you are.

"There always need to be One and an Other. With your Jedi training, you both should be well versed in dualism." the Other commented. "Two sides, always warring. All too similar and yet stark opposites. You and the inner demon you felt coming out while you were at Intelligence meeting. Mara Jade...and the woman you almost mistook her for, the woman who has double-crossed her into trying kill you. Double the Game...

"...Double the Fun." Luke finished, his hands balling into fists. "So there's all there is to it? You're two Gods playing a game of chess with us as pawns, all just for kicks?"

"No, of course not. We're the consciences of two very sad people, bringin' 'em together and tellin' 'em to stop mopin' 'round and take matters into their own hands." the One laughed. "We are the consciences of everyone..."

"And we want you..."

"...To fight!"

They touched them together as much they spoke that last bit together, and their hands went to their hearts, their souls, as much as their words had done, and when they came out, they'd taken out a piece, perhaps the most important piece, and had become that piece. And while one had become something never seen before, something mysterious and dark to point of sending shivers down Luke's spine, the other, in contrast of his own nature (at least when those that walked in the shadows had thought him one of them), had become something explicit, so explicit that made Mara's blood boil and her violet lightsaber fly in her hand: Lumiya.

The lightwhip-toting cyborg had wasted no time in confronting her, and huge chunks of blood were already flying on the floor.

But whereas Lumiya tried to bring Mara down with sheer violence, what the guy dressed as Grand Inquisitor was doing was merely goading Luke, bringing him further and further away from the other fight, from Mara, from Ken, mocking him and persecuting him without actually fighting him, with that blue lightsaber in his hand looking so much like his father.

And as Mara fell to her knees at the mercy of Lumiya's blade, and before her eyes replayed the image of a smug Shira Brie, still human and victorious in an almost-to-the-death fight that had occurred eight years ago, the first and only time she'd tried to run away from the Empire, looking at her with superiority, as if to remind her that whatever she did, she could never truly escape those she belonged to, not even giving her the _mercy_ of putting her out of her misery after she'd broken her - - Luke found himself alone, back in that cave on Dagobah, the darkness breathing on his neck just like the first time, only _this_ time, it was much more _personal_.

And just as he looked around, trying to see through the claustrophobic mist and the overwhelming darkness. When he felt the shadows move, he was an apprentice once again, striking before seeing, before thinking - - and a head rolled on the ground.

Shakily, Luke bent down, and gently removed the hood that concealed the face under it, and when he did, he could do nothing but scream.

And Mara Jade, you ask? She was fighting her own Game, panting heavily as Lumiya cracked the whip again.

"What are you?" she spat, and saw blood splatter on the floor as she did. Her blood.

"I am you. What you are and what you most fear. At your very core, your innermost darkness bears my face. And it's laughing my head off at your incapacity to gather up the balls to finally beat it out of your system."

"Oh, I've got more balls than you'll ever have, you two-credit schutta." Mara laughed hollowly, taunting Lumiya back. "C'mon, hit me! Hit me!"

"As you wish." Lumiya stated, cracking the whip again - - only Mara pulled the hundred metal whips around her own swordarm with the Force, shifting her lightsaber to her left hand and then, before the lightwhip itself could cut her right arm off, she went slashing through them, then through the arm and mask of the stunned Sith Lady, and the dead weapon uselessly and deafeningly clattered to the floor, with Mara backhanding Lumiya with her injured right arm, making the mask clatter off too, just to get a good look at Shira Brie's face...oh, no. Oh, Force, no, it couldn't be.

It was the face of the little girl in her dream, the one with the poison green eyes - -

Her hands went to her mouth faster than she could have ever willed, but they weren't fast enough to stop her scream - -

"ENOUGH!"

Lumiya and the Inquisitor recoiled, as if struck by lightning...and dissolved, becoming the one and the other once again (but did they do so in that order?), and could not hide their surprise.

"He's the key." the Other remarked, returning to his usual, mysterious self. "The key out."

"He's one." the One breathed out, as his memories - - or rather, the memories of the face he was wearing - - and fell to his knees, his disproportionate, massive height bringing him at Ken's eye level, his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Kid...y'know who you are, ain't it?"

"Yes."

"Good." the man replied, grasping Ken tighter, making the boy's icy grey eyes stare into his own, and find out they were burning. "It's a gift few receive. Which means, whateber happens, don't do what I did, y'hear me? Don't ever do it."

"Do what?" Ken pressed on, but the man was already fading away.

"Forget it." the man said, but by now he was little more than a mirage. "Don't ever forget it."

And then the mirage dissolved, and the three were back in Luke's room, alone and cold with thoughts to keep them warm at night.

"It can't be the truth." Mara gripped the sheets tighter. "Lumiya can't be the little girl in my dreams. She just can't, it's something I can feel in my bones - - but Shira Brie and I were too much alike in too many ways, weren't we? Oh, Gods. Oh Gods. I'm going mad, isn't it? I've finally snapped and I'm going mad."

"Mara..." Luke whispered, hugging her: "You're not alone. You'd never believe what I saw. You'd ran away in fear if I told you...but it's not everything."

"It's not?"

"When I fought my opponent, I could sense his intentions...no, they almost felt like they were my own...I had a premonition."

"A premonition of what?" Mara questioned, and Luke climbed off the bed, and began to get dressed, turning to Ken: "Go wake up Han. Leia's in danger."

**-Line Break-**

The Senate building was more crowded than usual, only this time the crowd wasn't made up only of politicians, bureaucrats, officers and reporters.

Punks, skinheads, lumpenproles and generally every unfortunate schmuck sitting on the bottom step of the ladder of society was roaming the area.

A riot was in the air, and Chancellor Mon Mothma was walking right through its very preparations. The tension was so thick you didn't have to be Force-sensitive to feel the ultraviolence ready to blow.

Feet stomped and hands clapped stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap, and angry shouting and protesting was heard from all around, both the Senate Guard and the CSF having a hard time keeping the crowd in place.

"The situation is getting too difficult to bear, Chancellor." the Captain of the Guard told Mon Mothma, Leia by her side. "But we've managed to clear a path, at least for now. I suggest you leave while it's still possible."

"It will be like running away from trouble. It will make things worse, in the long run. I must face them, Captain." Mon Mothma bitterly reflected, and the Captain replied: "If you stay here, Chancellor, there won't even be a long run at all. Please, you must go at once."

"We're running away to fight another day. Just like in the Rebellion. We'll be strong enough next time around." Leia urged, though she wasn't happy with the situation, either, and Mon Mothma finally agreed, and the Captain gave a signal to his men. Immediately, though, as they moved through the cleared path, a lone figure detatched himself from the crowd, and a strange hacked music began blaring through the speakers all around as the figure threw himself in front of the group with a superhuman jump.

Gods save the queen  
The fascist regime  
They made you a moron  
Potential H-bomb

Gods save the queen  
She ain't no human being  
There is no future

In the Galaxy's dreaming

The music of the Sex Blasters blared and he went along with it, but you couldn't distinguish if he was referring to Leia or Mon Mothma. He was terrifying in the madness of his visage, those blue eyes gleaming with a frantic light. Immediately guards from Mothma's personal entourage went to block him, only to be met by a violent resistance - - and by violent resistance we mean he Vaapad-ed them asses. Leia felt a chill run down her spine. Luke had once shown her the form, after Yoda himself had shown him what little he'd ever managed to learn of it. She knew that only a Jedi or a Sith could know it, let alone master it, and the chill intensified as the man repeated his lightsaber-less use of Form VII on two other guards.

Don't be told what you want  
Don't be told what you need  
There's no future, no future,  
No future for you

God save the queen  
We mean it man  
We love our queen

God saves

It was monstrous. As if he relished in his own madness, which could have very well just been it, but Leia knew there was more - - but what? What?! The man didn't seem to care at all - - as soon as the guards fired at him he just absorbed the blasts in his left hand - - he tackled one of them - - let the energy flow through the helmet - - cut it like butter - - make him scream - - and scream - - and scream - - and SCREAM - -

God save the queen  
'Cause tourists are money  
And our figurehead  
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history  
God save your mad parade  
Oh Lord God have mercy

All crimes are paid

Luke came at last. Threw himself in front of the man, saber ought and ready - - and he SCREAMED he too - - as soon as he saw the man's face. Horribly burned, yes, and the burns were in the shape of the Bogan symbol, the symbol of Darkness, yes... but that was his own face. The face he'd seen under the Grand Inquisitor's hood.

Oh God save history  
God save your mad parade  
Oh Lord God have mercy  
All crimes are paid

When there's no future  
How can there be sin  
We're the flowers in the dustbin  
We're the poison in your human machine  
We're the future, your future

"So, will the Gods save the Queen, Luke Skywalker?" the man laughed, his saber out - - and it was Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. "So, will them, brother? Or will they kill her? It's their Game to after all, OUR Game to...and I'm dying to play."

"Who are you?" was all Luke could reply, a hoarse choke in the midst of all that mad laughter.

"Call me Luke Hitari, brother." the man laughed again, and the saber dance commenced, and the two dancers jumped back as their sabers clashed. "I am you. I am the very decay you can't stop your cells from assuming, the cancer at the core of your soul. And just like it goes with cancer and the person affected by it... one of 'em's gotta go."

Gods save the queen  
We mean it man  
We love our queen  
Gods saves

Gods save the queen  
We mean it man  
And there is no future

In the Galaxy's dreaming

"Then let it be you, monster." Luke snarled, and their sabers clashed again.

Luke found himself pushed back every time, forced to rely on Soresu and Djem-So against the furious Vaapad of his opponent. He had more technique and experience, but Luke Hitari was far more ferocious than him, and fought like he'd held a lightsaber from the first day of his life. He looked older, too - - but Luke knew better. He'd seen the same thing happen on his stem cells. They deteriorated very soon, and the man's rapid aging was a telltale sign of his real nature. Three more years would have killed him no problem, due to the degenerative factor in the cells. And yet, despite the rapid aging, his stamina never seemed to decrease; but Luke knew at once that Hitari was relying heavily on the Dark Side of the Force...an act which only accelerated his aging.

No future, no future,

No future for you

No future, no future,

No future for me

No future, no future,

No future for you

No future, no future

For you

One lucky strike... it could end it all - - and it was Mara's.

Luke Hitari screamed in pain, as his right arm flew away and Mara caught his lightsaber - - Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber - - but he blasted her away with Force Lightning, grabbing her own violet lightsaber and fleeing, slashing through the crowd.

"Who...who the Hell was that?" Mara asked, and Luke panted out: "The Grand Inquisitor. In my vision, at least."

"Luke!" Leia shouted, running up to hug her brother - - and screw the fact that they were in public - - and almost crushed his ribs in the embrace. "Thank the Force you came...I was petrified. It reminded me all too much of what I felt..."

"...At the Battle of Endor...when I almost fell." Luke finished. "I'll explain later, Leia. In the meantime, tell the cops to take that arm as evidence - - I need to analyze it."

"Sure, but - -"

"Just do it." Mara interrupted the Senator. "If our visions are true, then we have very little time to prepare for what's coming."

"You - - wait a minute, I know you. You're Mara Jade. The Emperor's Hand."

"Former Emperor's Hand." Mara growled. "Luke and I are...friends."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Well, we are." Mara deadpanned at Leia's disbelief, and Luke added: "Lumiya set the both of us up to kill each other, Leia. We've been searching for her for the last two days."

"The bitch is back, and something tells me that that crazy son of a schutta Luke Hitari is with her."

"The visions, right? They always were together, in the visions - -"

"Screw the visions, Luke! Didn't you see the burns on his face? That's the same symbol sported by that other assassin sent by Lumiya. The same symbol sported by all Inquisitors in the last year before the Battle of Endor."

"So Hitari really was the Grand Inquisitor."

"I don't know. Just - - listen, I'll tell you everything. Just - - let us get to a more secluded place, okay? I can't stand the crowd: I can't breathe when I'm in the middle of one."

"We better move then - - damn, I see Jengar Hoover coming. He'll obviously want to listen."

"You can bet your buns he ain't gonna get anything outta me, Organa - - and besides, it's nothing personal, what I'm going to tell you.

-Line Break-

Later, at the NRCRD...

"...The Inquisitorius was a group of Darksiders founded by Darth Vader to work as the Rule of Two's intelligence network in the Force and hunt the Jedi who'd survived Order 66...and, of course, less explicitly, to undermine Palpatine's own power. Palpatine knew of this, of course, so he hired Doctor Cylo and his replicas to create a countermeasure, a group of beings that would be Palpatine's insurance policy if Vader ever rebelled. The Astarte twins, General Karbin...you know them, I think. Vader eliminated them all, one by one, while the Inquisitorius had gone into hiding prior to the Battle of Yavin, at least in the Empire's eyes.

"At the time, they were ruled by Grand Inquisitor Antinnis Tremayne, a former Jedi Padawan (but Tremayne's a fake name). Tremayne ruled for eight years, succeeding the first Grand Inquisitor, a Pau'uan (formerly a Jedi Temple Guard) whose name I can't remember, who lasted for fourteen years...an eternity, for a Darksider. Tremayne was killed exactly two months after Bespin, and three months later, his successor rebelled to the Emperor and got away with it. I was there when it happened. I remember he exerted an influence over his brothers and sisters that neither Palpatine nor Vader could boast. He'd put the Bogan symbol on all of them: Lumiya (she was the Ninth Sister and one of ISB's top guns before declaring herself a Sith Lady), Drogan Adasca (that was the cyborg we fought, Luke. He'd worked with Cylo III, and believed augmentations were a key advantage), Kesno Ren, Annazarka Katara...everyone seemed to be under the spell of this stranger of unknown species whose face you could never see, as it was perpetually hidden inside his black hood, the only thing visible his malicious, blood-red eyes and his bloodcuring smile, at least when he bared his teeth.

"He called himself Luke Hitari, yes, alright, but I never saw his face, so for all I know the crazy fuck you dueled could have been someone else...I'm just saying it's the same name and the same brand of madness."

Luke looked up from the body of the Arkanian derivate he was exhamining with Statura, the Inquisitor, gestured to the arm Mara had cut off at the elbow from Hitari's body, and turned to Mara. "Did his presence ever feel like the man we fought today?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Hoover raised an eyebrow from the corner he was standing in. "I thought Force-sensitives could identify people by their signature in the Force. Are you hiding anything, Mara Jade? Or have you been making up more than you know? There's a fine line between the two..."

"Screw you, Hoover. I'm tellin' y'all what I know, and what I know is that hr could mask his Force signature and make it anonymous...but he couldn't do the same with his madness. It was the only thing that set him aside from everyone else, because no one's ever been as crazy as he is, and no one ever will...thankfully." Mara shivered a bit, and Luke turned to Ken, huddled on a chair in the lab, his eyes staring a thousand yards away.

"And you, Ken? What did you feel, when you felt Hitari."

"I couldn't tell the two of you apart." Ken deadpanned softly, his fingers slowly clenching with the memory of that horror with a capital H that only Force-sensitives of his caliber and sensitivity could relate to. "That madness was in both of you. But you were sad...desperate to escape it. I felt you fleetingly revisit memories of me, of Leia and Han, of the whole gang, of your childhood, of Mara, too...I found a confused picture...hope. A dream. You, Mara, and me. Together. Another boy was with me. I didn't see his face."

Luke swallowed grimly. Hope. A dream. A dream alright. He prayed for it to come true. "And Hitari?"

"A blank slate. Just a kriffin' blank slate." Ken replied dazedly, as if recounting a dream that was flashing before his eyes, and the dream was the big, harsh and ungrateful holomovie we dare to call reality. "All I could feel was his madness, his sickness, no other thoughts, no other emotions...it was claustrophobic. There's no other word I could have used to describe it."

"That's enough, Ken, thanks." Luke extended his organic hand toward the boy's temple, but he recoiled. "No. I want to keep that feeling. I'll be prepared, next time."

"Fine." Luke said, not entirely convinced, and addressed the whole room, that was basically last night's meeting cramped in his little lab. "My analysis confirm that my attacker was, in fact, Inquisitor Adasca or what was left of him. He's modified his body to the point we could say he had a 'surgical madness'... as for Luke Hitari's arm, it's got a prosthetic hand, just like mine, and that it's a very advanced one at that, bionic, just like mine, though not beskar-made, just plain old durasteel...but his DNA. His DNA made me understand several things...including the recent breach in my personal vault here at NRCRD."

"Don't let us hang, then." Hoover pressed. "Because I'd like to be enlightened too, on that matter. You did repeatedly assure the NRI that your cells couldn't be cloned and used by the enemy due to a genetic defect, since the NRI itself was set up."

"Just as you asked me to." Luke remarked, before gesturing at the severed arm again. "However, I never said they _couldn't_ be cloned. I just said the clones would not last long. And I've noticed a peculiarly rapid aging in Luke Hitari's biometric reading in the Force."

There was a collective gasp at that, the realization hitting everyone present in the room like a ton of bricks. However, before panic could get hold of all the military and politic echelons in there, it was Leia who spoke, pale as a wraith. "How can that be?"

"I lost a hand and that lightsaber in Cloud City, Leia. Vader was there and obsessed about making me his apprentice. Guess he found a way, but it backfired. There's really not much more to that. I'm even surprised they went along with it, because they should have known of the degenerative factor. The clone should have lasted a year, in normal conditions."

"Then why is he still alive?"

"The Dark Side, of course. The greatest motivation of a Darksider, aside from power, is survival. The Dark Side of the Force, at its purest, can be summed up into this: hang on for dear life and don't let go, whatever it takes." Luke finished, and Statura supplied: "That's why he stole Boss's stem cells. He'd hoped they could stabilize him - - but given what went on the HoloNet today, I don't think it worked. I would give him two or three months more of life, give or take a few weeks."

"You see, intern," Hoover went, with barely suppressed anger, "I like to think of the New Republic as a body, and of its enemies as its diseases. And when a body is FILLED with diseases, we can't just wait two or three months for one of those diseases die to out."

"Thanks for stating the glaringly obvious, Hoover. But what do you propose to draw him out, then?" Rieekan questioned him, adding sourly: "Don't tell me it's your usual witch-hunting strategy. We've had enough of those."

"Enough?" Hoover's nostrils flared. "The CSF can't keep order on Coruscant anymore, and it gets worse and worse the more the news about its abandonement as Republic capital spread. Cults and cultures of every sort and flavor are sprouting like Tenkavan mushrooms, and the punks are just the worst. Anarchic. Subversive to the system. Unrestrainable. Didn't you notice that Luke Hitari came right out of their crowd, today? How many other psychos or Imperial agents do you think hide - - or are hidden - - among them? There's too many of them, they're too appealing to the masses to be contained, and there will be even more if we don't do something. How many Luke Hitari's do you think will have found refuge among them by then? I'll tell you, Rieekan. An army. You should understand the meaning and significance of the word, being a General."

"You can't just arrest a twelfth of Coruscant's population like this and then weed them out one by one, Director Hoover. There'll be more than a riot. There'll be a revolt, and with most of our military in the Outer Rim, there'll be a bloodbath." protested Lando, his usual, amiable demeanor dropped, the one he'd just exposed not being a gamble he'd like to take. "Gods, you're the NRI! You should have better means than that to determine where Lumiya and her friends are."

Hoover remained silent.

Nobody had noticed the faint, blinking cue light in the corner of Adskynar's remaining robotic eye, which should have been deader than disco. Nobody had noticed the faint, mute distress signal that the dead cyborg was sending to his brothers, calling them to him.

Nobody but Hoover, and it had taken the Director two seconds to realize two things: one, every person vital to the survival of the New Republic (with a few extras) was cramped up in the same room; two, Admiral Gial Ackbar's most famous epigram: IT'S A TRAP!

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Whew! Thank God this chapter is finally done... I think it's the longest chapter I've ever written. It took me more than a month and a half, but it was really satisfying. I hope it was just as satisfying for you guys, but in any case, stay tuned for the next two chapters, the final ones - - and don't forget to leave a Review!**


	8. Chapter 8: Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke Skywalker's patience may have reached its breaking point. Surrounded by Imperial troops and Inquisitors, his only hope to escape this debacle with his sanity intact is to find his doppelganger, Luke Hitari, and make him talk. But it might not be so easy...

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello, fanfictioners! How's it going? Me, I'm excited, very excited, all hyped up. This is the third-to-last(-but-not-least) chapter you'll ever read of Star Wars: Dark Mirror. But don't worry, a sequel will come out after a revisdion of this story is completed - - Force knows how much it needs one.**

**But enough marketing, we're already late enough with catching up, so let's get...**

**...On with the Story, then!**

**Chapter Eight: Showdown**

Shit.

Everybody get DOWN!" Hoover shouted, as black shapes crashed in front of the transparisteel windows of the lab.

Shadow Guards marked with the Bogan symbol and shadowtroopers of the finest and deadliest the ISB or what was left of it could provide tore through the security of the NRCRD, all converging on the same lab where everyone important enough to be killed was waiting to be killed, guided by the distress signal Adasca's lifeless body was emitting.

"They're not doing anything." Ken observed, from his hiding place and Leia, crouched behind a table with a blaster in hand, agreed: "That's right. They're just standing outside, as if waiting for something. But what? I can't sense it. Force, I can't even sense any will to attack from them, or the reason they're here."

"Stang." muttered Han, realizing: "It's a bomb."

"What?"

"General Solo is right." Hoover surprisingly agreed. "Adasca's corpse a bomb. It's bleeping, soundlessly, but it's bleeping faster and faster by the minute. It's a countdown. Those people outside - - they're just there to make sure no one escapes."

"Stang," Rieekan mildly but uncharacteristically swore :"What do we do?"

"You and Hoover bring the Chancellor and all the other bumblin' polits out," Mara curtly replied, focusing on Adasca's body. "We cheat."

The body slammed through the window and into Alicia Beck at exactly the right time.

The ISB echelon had only time to mutter: "Kriff - -"

...and the resulting explosion was nothing short of plain old glorious, limbs and screams flying everywhere so similarly you couldn't tell the formers from the latters.

"You know, my old dead uncle had a great ancient sayin in Old Basic for this kinda situations, and if I remember correctly, it was..." Lando flashed his Lando smile as he watched the Imperial forces collapse on themselves and sat back to watch the show, nodding appreciatively to Mara's little trick, "Surprise, motherfuckers."

Shadow Guard commander Kesno Ren was the first of the Inquisitorius troop to get back on his feet after the blast, his face burned bleached and bald and the right half his mouth fused together, garbling to rally the others: "Get back on those kriffin' sons of - - RrrggggAH!"

...And was promptly shot in the left cheek by Han Solo just to shut the seven-feet-tall humanoid up. Furious, he turned on his saberstaff and hurled a nearby speeder at the hapless ex-smuggler, who was thrown out of the way by a just-in-time Force Push, as the speeder careened into the entrance of the NRCRD and blew a hole in it.

"You've got a third Jedi, huh? It won't do you any good, Solo, especially if she's your...wife?" the Darksider's eyes suddenly beamed with malicious glee at the realization, and made Han's blaster crumble on itself at the muzzle. "Oh, she'll be a real treat to turn, the last Queen of Alderaan herself...I hope you live long enought to watch us break her..."

"Break this." Leia Organa herself blasted the Guard away with a precise shot to the chest, then helped up Han, who protested: "Hey, I was going to do that myself."

"Another time, maybe. We've got an attack to fend off."

"At your orders, Princess." Han smirked cockily, and the two jumped back into the fray.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Dark Side survivors was pretty much being butchered by a very, very angry Mara Jade.

"COME ON, YOU SONS OF SCHUTTAS! WHERE IS THE BITCH?! WHERE IS LUMIYA?!" she roared as she tore apart Guard after Guard, ISB Agent after ISB Agent.

"We'll bring you to her." another, dark-skinned Inquisitor pointed her blade at her, the way a zookeeper does to keep a dangerous animal at bay. "But you'll have to put your lightsaber down."

"Okay." Mara surprisingly agreed - - and shot the other woman thrice with her concealed hand-held blaster as she dropped her lightsaber to the ground, before picking it up again before it could actually TOUCH the ground. "Don't say you didn't ask me."

"You karkin' schuttha!" The woman choked, getting up again as she was not yet down for the count, and brandished her lightsaber once more. "Anna's gonna make you pay now, you can bet it, Imma gonna get medieval on your ass."

"Come on try that, schutta, I dare you, I double dare you, schutta." Mara threw back, and their sabers clashed once again.

The others weren't any luckier than that anyway.

"We must get Chancellor Mothma and the others to safety." Luke told Hoover. "I need you and General Rieekan to get them to the emergency shuttle. Think you can do it? Lando will help. I'll hold them off - - "

"No." Hoover replied steely, stopping him dead in his tracks as he put a hand on his shoulder. "I am the Director of the New Republic Intelligence, and yet I've failed to foresee any of the events occured in these few days. You're a Jedi. It's your job to protect people. I'm an old dog. A dog of war. Best distraction you could ever hope for, so go and save everyone, Skywalker. I've sat behind a desk for too long."

And with that, Director Jengar Eamus Hoover, former General of the Rebel Alliance, former mercenary at the service of the Shadow Guard during the Mandalorian Civil War, took Luke Skywalker's blaster and proceeded to drive throught the fight like a lawnmower over grass.

The first three troopers went down all too easily, but the fourth managed to fire before being shot down. Hoover merely stole the blaster from his corpse and shot a ISB commander and a vibrobaton-wielding stormtrooper sergeant before they could even insult him.

Good, he thought. I've dealt with enough insults in this lifetime.

A searing pain in his shoulder forcefully - - and painfully - - shook him out of his musings, and he emptied the clip on the ancient HK-700 battle droid as he turned to him, biting back a scream as four other raging-hot bolts of plasma went through him, one into his side, and the other through his thigh, the third narrowly sizzling his scalp and the fourth getting lost somewhere he was in too much pain to guess right now.

He spat blood as the ancient weapon crumbled to its knees, knowing that hot plasma bolts could cautherize the wound and keep it closed for a rather short time, made shorter by the fact that fighting while wounded in such a way is...probably not the best treatment for these kind of injuries.

He stumbled towards where the core of the fighting was. He could see Solo and Organa holding off half a dozen stormtroopers, and saved Solo from a shot in the back with a well-placed headshot.

Solo's surprised face was obscured by the growing dark spots at the edge of his vision.

He saw Rieekan being pinned down by an Inquisitor, and Calrissian was struggling to get a shot through his impenetrable lightsaber defense. Hoover got a shot through his knee and good bye impenetrable defense.

Jade was fighting just a few meters ahead. Just a little closer - -

"Not a chance, human." Kesno Ren sneered, running him through with his lightsaber. Hoover coughed blood on the terrifying visage the man possessed after being blown up and shot countless times, his hand going to the package he'd always kept strapped to his waist for almost thirty years. "So what are you going to do? Shoot me? Stab me? I have such mastery of the Dark Side of the Force that I can't die, despite whatever happens to my body. My soul just can't be separated from it."

"I'm...really sorry fo...r you, then." Hoover choked, and retrieved the package and calmly unfolded it. He knew from experience that the explosion of a lightsaber's powercell could wipe out anything in a five-meter radius. And he had Ren's blade in his body all the way to the hilt. Perfect.

Time to end this with a bang. He deserved one, after all, or so he felt.

And the espression on Ren's face as he dropped the contents if the package - - a scrambler that could make any energy-charged device short-circuit and explode - - on his lightsaber made it all the more worthwhile.

-Line Break-

Luke breathed heavily in relief, certain of having lost the Inquisitor chasing him and the group in the bowels of the NRCDR. The politicians were all disappearing into the underground hangar...

...Wait a minute. There is no underground hangar, here.

But it's impossible, he thought. I've led them to the outer platform to fool our pursuer, and then back inside and into the...

A sudden realization hit him, and he grabbed the last of the line, shattering the illusion - - and revealing the whole group to have just been Ken...the whole time.

"Ken!" Luke exclaimed, so furious and stunned at the same time he could find no words to express himself. "What in the Nine Hells are you doing here?"

"Helping." the boy shrugged, and as Luke deflated, unable to come up with any reply worth of this name, added: "And besides, Luke, there's nothing to worry about. I distracted the Inquisitor, btought all the polits to safety, and managed to lose him in this place. Not too bad of a start for a wannabe Padawan, ain't it?"

"Nothing to worry about?" Luke spoke in disbelief. "Ken, you're all I was worried about."

Ken bounced back, slightly taken by surprise, but quickly recovered. "Well, stop worrying, then. I can take care of myself, and besides, no one is going to find us soon, right."

"Wrong." a deep, mechanical voice spoke from behind them, and in a split second, the scenery changed.

An unkown gas started to seep into the room, and the two Jedi quickly created Force bubbles around their mouth and noses to filter the air, knowing fully well that whatever that gas was, it was in no way something to breathe.

"Really? Force rebreathers? It seems that there really is no way to kill you, brother." clad in full Inquisitor attire and now out of his punk gear, Luke Hitari stepped through the mist as if completely at home in it, wearing a functioning full-face rebreather, a sack slung over his shoulder, his lightsaber nowhere to be seen, laughing, mocking, taunting. "Just stop fighting, for a second. Even the most powerful warriors need to catch a breath."

"I'm no warrior." Luke increased his focus on the bubbles as the gas literally pushed itself over them. "Why do you want to kill me? Why? Do you even have a reason, or is it because you're just a failed experiment?"

"Because I'm dying." Luke Hitari replied simply, stepping closer, and revealed what was in the sack.

A ysalamiri.

Luke only had the time to swear once before he draped an arm around Ken and the gas knocked them both back unconscious.

**~SW~**

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**SURPRISE CLIFFHANGER!**

**...And yes, I did it again. Don't worry, though - - I didn't do it just for the sake of trolling with you. The next chapter - - the last chapter if we don't count the epilogue - - will contain a bloody and deeply emotional resolution to this conflict, so I wanted to balance out the chapters.**

**Just stay tuned for it, it's gonna be LEGEN - wait for it - DARY!**

**P.S. In the meantime, please don't forget to Read, Recommend, & Review!**


	9. Chapter 9: One with the Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end is nigh for Luke Skywalker and mara jade, it seems. Finally, they have to face the greatest threat of their lives...their family.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello, fanfictioners. You know, I thought this story was never going to end... or rather, I thought I was never going to write again,** **_period_ ** **, as I'd broken my right hand around December and it took a long time to heal. Anyway, in January I went to see** **_Rogue One: A Star Wars Story_ ** **...and just like with** **_The Force Awakens_ ** **, I loved it. Say what you want, but I loved it. I fell in love with the characters, I fangasmed at the Darth Vader rampage at the end, the cinematography and locations were utterly beautiful (the editing, not so much, but hey, the movie went through more reshoots than** **_Suicide Squad_ , after all** **), and my God, the** **_tone_ ** **of the story...it was exactly what I'd aimed to achieve in this story (if I've been successful in doing so, it's your job to tell) right here,** **_Dark Mirror._ **

**Immediately, I took a resolution. I had to finish** **_Dark Mirror_ ** **, and make it as dark yet enjoyable a story as** **_Rogue One_ ** **...and about the results, yeah, well, you can see them for yourself down here, so...**

**...On with the Story, then!**

**Chapter Nine: One with the Force**

_Gods does my back hurt_ , was the first thing Luke thought as he regained consciousness.

 _Where am I?_ he then thought as he groggily opened his eyes and tried to assess his situation. Apparently, the answer was _Still in the secret vault of the NRCRD_...

...and tied to a pole. Force, this was embarrassing. The last time it had happened, the pole had been sideways and on a spit roast, and he was going to be cooked and eaten by _kriffin' teddy bears_. Luckily, this time he was in good company.

"Hey, Mara."

"What, farmboy?"

"How are you feeling?"

"I want to bash my head on this pole till either of them breaks, but I'm tied too tight. Gods, they got me like an amateur."

"Same here."

"No offense, but when it comes to secret spy missions, you _are_ an amateur."

"Oh, give me a break and try to find a light."

"Not to break out of these restraints?"

"Already working on it."

"I'm already _halfway_ through it, so _you_ look for the light, farmboy."

"Can't believe we sound like an old married couple already... no, scratch that. We sound like Han and Leia." Luke said. "Force, we sound like Han and Leia already. Ken's so _not_ gonna let this go..."

"Speaking of your son, where in the Nine Hells is he?"

"Safe." a horribly familiar voice spoke, and then the lights were turned on, revealing an imposing figure emanating a ragged, deeply mechanical breathing. For a second the two thought back with horror to a resurrected Darth Vader, but then the figure stepped into the light and the illusion was dispelled.

"Lumiya." growled Mara, recognizing the cyborg. "What are you waiting, now? You led and got us here, setup after setup and mindscrew after mindscrew. Why don't you tell us what's next?"

"Your death." Lumiya said, before glaring at the figure in the corner. "Or at least that's what _I_ 'd want to be next."

"We tormented them this long, this far and this deep already." Luke Hitari turned to reply, his trademark rictus grin as always present and at attention on his marked face. "And you want to stop _now_?"

"I want them both to pay. One for the life she kept, one for the life he forced on me. I want them to suffer a pain they've never felt before, to be trapped in a realm of pain until they die, and then their souls to be dragged down to Chaos and be torn apart by the raging souls of the thousand million billion Sith Lords that ever lived...but only you can accomplish such a thing, and you just won't!" Lumiya raged, revealing herself as nothing but a hollow shadow of her former, terrifying self. "I built you for this one purpose, and you just won't!"

"Oh, did you really? Did you build me?" Luke Hitari smiled, getting into her face. "Or did _I_ build _you_? And who cares, at this point?"

Without even waiting for the answer, Hitari turned back to his 'brother'. "What a contrived coincidence, isn't it? I have the son of someone born from the one who ordered me built. Would it make us cousins, me and little Ken?" Luke didn't reply, and Luke went on. "I wonder...what with his 'tastes', I could turn us into _kissing_ cousins with little effort and much enjoyment."

"Don't you dare touch him. Don't you _dare_."

"I would do so without hesitation and I can't even tell if it would be out of the sheer heck of it or just to make you suffer for no reason."

"Then you'd better run, because if I don't kill you on the spot I'll hunt you down and did to you what I did to Shadowspawn on Mindor."

"Sounds like fun." Hitari grinned. "And to think you had accepted our Father."

"That's because there was still good even in his darkness. You, on the other hand, are just the pathetical reflection of myself I'd see if I looked into a deforming mirror."

"That's all I am to you?" Hitari spat. "So be it, then. We'll see what your son thinks of all of this."

The Inquisitor stormed out of the room, leaving them with Lumiya."

Luke looked at her for the briefest of seconds - - and it was enough to him. He just couldn't stand it. This had once been a woman he'd loved, a woman by whose side he'd fought, a woman with whom he'd dreamed of having a future beyond all the fighting. And now all that remained was an empty shell of pain, hatred and revenge - - all because he'd done the right thing.

Mara, on the other hand, had her jade eyes fixated into Lumiya's golden ones, and she just couldn't understand.

"Why did you never tell me anything?" the assassin asked her sister, who just kept standing a few feet away from her without responding. She could feel her anger and hatred and all the million emotions raging inside of her, yet Lumiya didn't speak. "I mean, if you knew, what would it have costed you, to go up to me and tell me everything?"

"The Emperor decided it was not to be the case." Lumiya pursued what remained of her lips in distaste. "He considered you his favorie protegé, and wouldn't tolerate any outside influences on you. I was tasked with the job of making sure you were not harmed by any such...influences."

Then she added, with something that could very well be mistook for regret: "I doubt you'd have welcomed me once you'd known, if not with a blaster bolt to the face."

"So you..." realization began on dawn on Mara's face...and she still could not believe it. "You were the one who took care of all my problems." And by problems, she sure as Hell meant 'scruples'.

The cruelty of this simple revelation shouldn't have fazed her, with all the far worse things she'd seen and done in her life. And yet it did. Her own sister was responsible for shaping her into the monster she had loathed many, many times, looking at herself in the mirror, whenever she'd snap out of her brainwashed daze and think for (and question) herself.

It was monstrous, and yet, she couldn't change it. Luke had tried in vain to redeem Lumiya far too many times already, so much that the very Light itself had become poisonous for her and she now needed the unbridled, untamed Darkness of Luke Hitari to sustain herself and keep her sanity.

But, to her surprise, Mara Jade found out she didn't want to reach out to her sister, to help her. Not in the slightest bit. Lumiya had gone too far. And to top it off, she was now focused only on Luke and her revenge. As usual, she'd just been a means to an end, a spanner in the works - - a nuisance.

Not anymore.

Not any- _kriffin'-_ more.

She finished getting out of her restraints just as Hitari walked back into the room with Ken. Without hesitation, she sent a force-charged kick straight into Lumiya's face.

The Sith Lady was sent scrambling back for balance, and Luke didn't hesitate to Force-pull his and Mara's lightsabers back to them as he freed himself too.

"Give it up, you two." Luke said as the pseido-dungeon shook. "I don't know how well you've secured this place, but our friends upstairs are not going to take much longer to break in and join us."

"So be it." Luke Hitari smiled, igniting his - - Ankain Skywalker's - - lightsaber. "I'll be delighted to say hello to our sister on your behalf, once she finds your corpse."

And with that, the double duel was on, and it immediately turned into a replica of that in that vision of the Players - - except this time, the roles were reversed.

It was now Mara that was ruthlessly storming after Lumiya with an unstoppable flurry of blows, and it was Luke who was leading Luke further and further into the maze that was the NRCRD boiler room.

Hitari, on his part, just kept hacking and slashing left and right, blowing pipes as he went.

Luke reciprocated in kind, a plan forming into his mind. It was the most ruthless thing he'd ever done, save for that time on Mindor - - but Force only knew he really had to do it this time. He had to.

**-Line Break-**

"You always were his favorite, you thought," Lumiya shouted after Mara, who had been momentarely pushed on the defensive due to her opponent's vicious counter-attack, "And this, in spite of always being the bigger failure."

"Says the one who got blown to pieces."

"I emerged stronger. You just stayed the soft one."

"You talk of my faults, yet you never even tried to talk to me. You said you knew me, that we were sisters, but it never mattered to you. So why should anything of what you say matter to me?" Mara said, blocking her lightwhip and switching lightsaber Forms. "Shira Brie was never my sister, and Lumiya most certainly is not. As far as I'm concerned, you're just some Emperor wannabe asking to be killed. And since it was my mission to eliminate wannabes...I'll happily oblige."

"Bring it on...fool." Lumiya once again crashed her lightwhip at Mara Jade, and the fight resumed.

**-Line Break-**

"Show yourself, you karkin' coward!" Luke. Hitari shouted, slashing in the fog at thin air and lead pipes.

"Why should I?" a taunting voice resounded from pipe to pipe. "You hoped to kill me and take my place, didn't you? Well, get over it. All of this...is useless. Your plans, your hatred, your machinations...they don't matter. You're just another mad tyrant, neither the first nor the last in a long, _long_ list. I feel a great swell of pity for how your life had to go... but I can't do anything about it."

"You can come out and fight! You call yourself a Jedi! I'm a Sith, so you've GOT to fight me."

"No. You're not a Sith. You're just a failed imitation, as you said yourself. A _dying_ failed iimitation. You're a walking cancer, and that's why you needed the genetic samples you stole...to heal yourself." a pause, and the voice seemed to go from taunting to sad: "But it didn't work, did it? It only made things even worse. Then, Lumiya decided to try it for herself all the same, and now she's dying too. But luckily, if this is an assisted suicide...I can help."

At that, Hitari realized that it wasn't Luke who was speaking, even if what he'd just heard was indeed his voice. Luke Skywalker was just too good to say something like that. And Mara Jade was being kept busy by Lumiya, so...

He sent a wave of disruptive energy through the Force. Electrical systems short-circuited, the mist thinned...and a Force Illusion was shattered.

 _The brat,_ Hitary growled internally. _It was the karkin' brat all along..._

Ken darted away, Hitari's lightsaber missing him by a bare inch as it spun past him - - or rather, right over him - - and lodged itself in the piping.

Hitari growled as the boy disappeared in the fog, and went after him, once again slashing and stabbing everything as soon his lightsaber was back in his hand.

That little brat! He'd tricked him good and he'd almost didn't notice...but he was not going to let him off so easily. His 'brother' could wait, for all he cared right now.

**-Line Break-**

"You're pathetic." Mara told Lumiya, one of her blows chipping off another chunk of armor from her side. "You don't approach me for over twenty years, instead spending them driving me further and further to the Dark Side...and when you finally show up, it's just to use me as a pawn to get revenge on your ex. How could you get any lamer than that?"

The two jumped back from each other once again, stumbling further back for several steps due to their numerous injuries.

Mara had managed to call Luke's shoto to her before the duel began, so at least she'd have a way to counter Lumiya's lightwhip. However, her inexperience with the weapon had left her bleeding copiously and sufferin from a hundred different superficial laser-induced injuries...but at least she'd managed to get rid of the dozen-odd steel whips connected to the lightwhip itself, leaving the Sith Lady much more open to her attacks.

"You don't get it, do you?" Lumiya panted, bleeding copiously herself and already suffering from the near-failure of her life support system-slash armor. "I never got anything out of our whole life, since Vader killed our mother and took us in. I was stronger, I was older, I was smarter. Both the Emperor and Vader recognized it, and yet they left me in your shadow. In the shadow of a shadow."

"I'm sorry. It's sad, and it makes me feel sorry for you, but I can't do anything about it." Mara stated. "But if there's something I _can_ do, is stop you. Stop you so you don't take away from me what little I've managed to get."

"If that's your answer, then we die here."

They charged at each other to lay the final blow - - and yet, even as they closed the distance between them, the Wall was still there.

But the final blow never came. Ken burst out of a smoke-filled corridor, bumping into them and disrupting their battle.

Lumiya didn't even have time to curse after him before Luke's lightsaber bisected her in two.

"Oh, kark." said Luke Hitari as he watched his accidental handiwork.

It was all Mara needed. In the span of a second, Hitari's sword hand was separated from his wrist. Hitari roared in agony and the Force all around him exploded, sending Mara flying against the opposite wall, Ken rushing to help her. His remaining hand caught hold of Mara's lightsaber and he turned at his 'brother', who was standing a few feet back, lightsaber drawn.

"You tricked me!" he said. "You and that kriffin' little brat! You made me kill her!"

"Maybe. Or maybe not." stated Luke. "Either way, it wasn't tragic. Anticlimactic, I'd say. All that buildup...and so little payoff. You're going to end just like that, you know? Killed by the wrong person, taken by surprise. You're going to go without a word, humiliated, broken, exactly like you wanted us to go. And it will be all just too much ado about nothing, because you won't have changed anything. Not even a single line of history. And the best part of it? I won't lift a finger to save you when it happens. You snuffed out the light that could have ever been in you, you went all out, you lost control, you became pathethic. And pathethic will be your death. Such is the will of the Force."

For a moment, Hitari did not respond. Then, he blasted Luke across the room.

"The Force," he said, "Means nothing."

He raised his lightsaber, ready to strike down Luke...until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to face the interloper- -and Mara Jade promptly stuck Anakin's Skywalker lightsaber right into his heart.

"Oh, really?" she whispered into his hear, and let him slide down onto the floor, the lightsaber dragging up a hole all the way from his chest to his shoulder. Hitari tried one last-ditch effort, calling her purple lightsaber to him through the Force...but it exploded in mid-air.

"Game over." said Ken, holding Mara Jade's still-smoking blaster. "Let's get out of here, now, if you please. I'm sick of this place and even sicker of the company."

And as they did, Luke Hitari started laughing. He laughed and kept laughing, even as the underlevel exploded. He'd failed, yet he just couldn't stop laughing.

**-Line Break-**

The group reemerged from the wreckage and watched as the vehicles of the fire brigade finally arrived to the place.

"You're safe." Leia said as she saw them, and darted through the crowd of firefighters and military officials to hug Luke and Ken, Han swiftly following after her, and doing, as always, a better job of dealing with his worries - - i.e. the (rather high) probability of seeing his best friend winding up dead at the next turn - -by being snarky about it.

"You brought him, back, Red." Han said, looking at Mara. "You brought both of them back. Really, I'm surprised you didn't drop them in some garbage chute along the way and shoot a couple of blasts down with them - - considering how you started out."

He didn't thank her, not verbally, but Mara Jade would have seen the sheer gratitude behind that poor effort at sarcasm - -and given him a break too, what with all the crazy he'd witnessed in the space of two days- - even without the aid of the Force. It was a gratitude none of Palpatine's praises could have ever expressed. Han Solo had very little in life but the family he'd found and managed to create while fighting in the Rebellion, after all. And being a non-Force-sensitive individual playing teammate to twins that regularly faced Galaxy-threatening evils...well, you didn't need to be a Jedi to see the utter powerlessness mixed with that sheer gratitude.

Mara gave him a nod and a similar jab and thankfully Han understood.

Good.

She'd never been taught how to express emotion - - all she'd ever known was to suppress it. She found something similar in Leia when she turned to her. The regal composure of her public image had given way to a woman worried to death about the fate of her brother and nephew - - such a stunning contrast, such raw emotion that Mara was at a loss of what to do, how to deal with her.

Luckily, as usual, Leia Organa took the matter in her own hands - - and straight-up hugged her.

Mara stumbled back, and not because of her injuries (thought hey didn't help); rather, she didn't know what to do, how to respond.

Leia saved her from that problem once again, and Mara began to seriously consider the possibility that that woman was a kriffin' _angel_.

Even if all she did was to detach from her and say: "Thanks."

Mara nodded back, feeling something wet run down her cheeks.

Tears.

Too much emotions. _Way_ too much emotions.

She grasped Luke's hand out of impulse as soon as he offered it to her as if it were a lifeline. Luke just smiled at her and tenderly wiped the tears off her cheeks with his thumb.

Mara felt Ken's hand snake up into her free one, and smiled a real, true smile, possibly for the first time in her life, letting herself be walked home by her newfound family, amidst the firefighters and rioting civilians.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**Hello again! Have you liked the chapter? If so, please leave a Review - - it helps me so much in improving the quality of my writing - - and don't forget to come back for the epilogue chapter!**

**Hope you spend a happy weekend, everyone, and May the Force be with you!**


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle is finally over.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**It's over. It's finally over.**

**I almost can't believe it, you know? This story started out as a mere one-shot trying to do a 'grittier' _Where Are They Now_  version of Luke Skywalker after  _Return of the Jedi_ , and then turned into an emotional confrontation between Luke and Mara Jade over the ghosts that haunt their lives now that the fight was over.  _T_ _hen_ it became a nearly-horror story about nightmares and the dangerous effects newly-discovered evil twins can have on your psyche...and then, it became what you've been reading as you made this journey together with me, along this heartfelt goodbye to the canonicity of the Legends continuity.**

**However, the more I wrote, the more I became attached to these characters. They weren't my characters, but I was attached to them, purely because I was writing their lives in a way so different from that of the movies that had spawned them. And so, I now think I'm not quite ready to let them go.**

**But now shush, I've talked to much. For now, let's just move...**

**...On with the Story, then!**

**Epilogue**

"So," Mara Jade finally asked as her and Luke got outside the New Republic Council Session they'd been invited to (they were, after all, a Jedi Master and a former Imperial Agent, not to mention possibly the strongest out of the  _very_ few Force-users the Republic had at its service), "It was a bit boring, wasn't it?"

"A waste of time." Luke nodded in agreement. "But at least it's over. Leia and Han can finally go home and for once be able to spend some time with their kid... and we're finally allowed to spend some quality time together, too."

"Hmmm." Mara nodded. The two walked out into an open terrace, the wind quietly blowing in the Coruscant skyline. "So you're fine with me permanently moving into tour place, then."

"Well, tours is a warzone. That fight with the Inquisitor basically destroyed it, didn't it?"

"Yeah. And you still owe me money for that, don't forget it."

"How could I ever? You won't stop bugging me about it, despite the salary of a researcher and part-tipe Jedi who just got his workplace trashed not being very high."

"Well, at least now you know where your veteran pension is going to end up."

"Very comforting."

"Anyway, how is your son?"

"Ken is fine. He's got himself a boyfriend, told me he wants to introduce him to us."

"Us?"

"Yes, us. He took quite a liking to you. He said, and I quote, that he 'wouldn't mind if you stuck around'."

"He really said that?"

"Ken has lived for the first twelve years of his life devoid of human contact - - he needs people. You, Mara, are one of the few who can understand the burden that he has to carry just by virtue of having been born."

"I guess that's true." Mara said, letting the full meaning of Luke's request sink in. "I don't have any experience with kids, though. I'm not sure I'd be any good at...at being a parent."

"Had I any experience when I started?"

"Fair enpugh. Guess we'll just be one big, happy family."

"Yeah." he meant it. Force, he really meant it. "And speaking of that, there is a Jedi tradition I want to honor."

"And what is it?" Mara watched as Luke took out his father's lightsaber from his jacket pocket.

"This belonged to my father. I want you to have it."

"Why?" Mara asked.

"So that you'll be a Skywalker yourself."

For a moment, Mara didn't reply. She really didn't know what to say. Luke was serious. He was serious, Force damn it. She felt her eyes grow wet, and struggled to find her words. "A...Are you proposing to me?"

"I couldn't imagine proposing to anyone else." Luke said, and Mara couldn't contain herself anymore.

"Gods, yes." she said in a breath, and then kissed him deeply. Luke kissed back, all the worries of his life and all the riots going on in the streets of Coruscant forgotten.

Everythhing was fine.

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

**And so it ends. My best story (or at least I consider it such) yet. What do you think of it? If you did like it, and still want to read more about Luke, Mara and Ken, I might even write a sequel. I'm already thinking about it- - in the meantime, don't you forget to Read & Review! ;)**

**D. The Wanderer, out!**


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